Re: focal length changed for a prime lens ? The effect is called breathing, and it afflicts essentially all still camera lenses. It afflicts lenses whether or not their focal length changes slightly during focusing. In your case, the focal length is clearly constant for all focus distances. Its fairly easy to understand what happens with a lens having simple focusing, as in your 50mm Zeiss. As you focus to a close object you move the lens further from the image plane. Therefore, the field of view must become smaller since the film/sensor subtends a smaller angle. Conversely, as you go from close focus to infinity the field angle gets bigger, and therefore the subject size would get smaller, which is what you noticed. The effect is more pronounced in wide angle lenses. Breathing can be corrected in the optical design, but typically this is only done for cine lenses, where dynamic focusing effects can be very critical. Its one reason why cine lenses are so expensive. Brian BC
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