How to set a a particular focal length?

[Suspishio]

I would be most grateful for assistance with a challenge I'm facing.

In 1974, I took 35mm pictures in London with a 55mm fixed focal length lens. Now I want to retrace my steps with an EOS 6D with a 24-105mm Canon lens and would like to set that lens to 55mm..

I have not found a way of doing this. The LED display will show either 50mm or 60mm but I can't make it sit on 55mm.

Anyone know how I can meet my requirement?

Thanks in advance.

[colin C]

Hello Suspishio and welcome to the Forum.

I am not sure how to repeat your steps in camera, but here is a workaround. Take the same images @ 50mm and crop to match your previous images in post editing.

Hope that helps.

[Suspishio]

Many thanks for the suggestion, Colin. Yes - that's what I'll do. It has its advantages in terms of width of field and I wouldn't bother cropping. It seems odd to me that on a Canon zoom lens, I can't set a specific focal length within the zoom range.

[@imagesBV]

The other option is to take a picture of the original image on your phone and match the framing from the same position......(I guess you didn't have the foresight to mark the position on the ground first time around)....set the zoom to 50mm as marked on the lens then adjust.

I did this recently from a picture of a street in the town (taken in the 1960s) displayed on the wall of a company that I visited .....i took a picture of the picture on my phone and then found the location - luckily a gatepost gave me a clue to the original shooting position..........not much had changed apart from a few trees were a lot bigger.

The original was taken by the father of the current MD of the firm I visited (an Oly user by the way)....so it was in interesting topic

[El Sid]

Many thanks for the suggestion, Colin. Yes - that's what I'll do. It has its advantages in terms of width of field and I wouldn't bother cropping. It seems odd to me that on a Canon zoom lens, I can't set a specific focal length within the zoom range.

The focal length positions marked on zoom lenses, when marked at all, have only ever been approximate regardless of the manufacturer or even price so not really odd...

Years ago Leica used to make lenses with multiple but fixed focal lengths, eg 28 - 35 - 50mm. They weren't zoom lenses as each position was the stated focal length but in-between positions did not exist - you could shoot at 28, 35 or 50mm and that was it.

[Avandor]

Well, that all depends on what you're shooting. If you are shooting a portrait of a person for example, and you want to emphasize their face, then you will want to use a short telephoto focal length like 85mm. This will compress the features of the person's face and make them appear larger in the frame. On the other hand, if you were shooting an expansive landscape shot and wanted to include as much of it as possible, you would use a much longer focal length like 500mm. This would cause the foreground objects to be significantly compressed while allowing you to see more of the background.