Another photograph today from the match to forget if you’re from Munster (or from the match to remember if you’re from Leinster). After capturing the view of the whole stadium that I posted yesterday, I switched to the only other lens I had brought with me and tried to frame a shot that suited its 50mm focal length.
The 50mm focal length is a bit of a classic in photography – so much so that the lens is often called the Nifty Fifty. It’s nifty partly due to its size and weight – small and light – and partly due to its focal length which isn’t too far from what the human eye sees, and so creates a natural perspective of a scene.
At least, that used be the case in film days. For most digital sensors (apart from full-frame sensors on the latest professional cameras) the effective focal length of the 50mm lens is actually closer to 75mm, which makes it quite a long lens, or in compact camera terms, quite “zoomed in”.
As I have used this lens more and more recently, I’ve found that this effective focal length can be a little constraining. For instance, for a portrait using this lens you have to go a reasonable distance back from the subject. At the rugby match on Saturday, the lens proved useful, especially for this shot where I wanted to get an image of the colour of the stadium.
With a telephoto zoom lens, it would have been all too easy to zoom right in on a group of fans and lose the sheer numbers apparent from this shot. Instead, the fixed length 50mm took any decisions on zoom away from me, and forced me instead to focus on framing the shot. I did cheat a little in post processing, choosing to crop a little bit from the top of the image (where one of the big screens in the stadium appeared near the top right, detracting a little from the scene of all the people).
As for the title – well it reminds me of Where’s Wally books I used enjoy when I was much younger. And as for the question of where Wally is in this photograph – I’m not sure, but given his preference for that red and white top, I’m guessing he’s one of the Munster fans.
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