What Focal Length Should You Use? A Practical Guide for Every Shooting Situation

Focal length is one of the most consequential decisions you make before pressing the shutter, and most people learn it the hard way, through years of trial and error. David Bergman's goal here is to compress that learning curve into a single, practical framework you can start using immediately.

Coming to you from Adorama, this detailed video from David Bergman starts with the fundamentals: what focal length actually is, how it's measured, and why the number on your lens doesn't tell the whole story. If you're shooting on a crop sensor body, that 50mm lens isn't giving you a 50mm field of view. Canon APS-C cameras apply a 1.6x crop factor, turning a 50mm lens into the equivalent of 80mm on full frame. Sony and Nikon APS-C bodies use a 1.5x crop, so that same lens behaves more like 75mm. Bergman shot the same scene outside Carnegie Hall using a Canon 11-24mm f/4, a 24-70mm f/2.8, and a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6, all from the exact same position, with identical exposure settings, so the only variable is field of view. The difference between 11mm and 400mm from one spot is genuinely striking.

From there, Bergman works through focal length recommendations by shooting situation. For landscapes and architecture, he starts at 24mm as a practical entry point, wide enough to be useful without the extreme distortion you get pushing into the teens. For weddings and events, he makes the case for a 24-105mm zoom as a single-lens starting point, with a second body carrying a 70-200mm for the photographers ready to take that next step. Street photography gets a longer treatment, with Bergman laying out the cases for 35mm, 50mm, and short telephoto options in the 85-135mm range, each with a different tradeoff between environmental context and subject isolation. For portraits, he lands on the 85mm as his recommended starting point, explaining how longer focal lengths produce shallower depth of field at the same aperture compared to shorter ones.

What makes this video worth your time beyond the genre-by-genre breakdown is the data Bergman pulls from his own work. He went back through 1,109 of his best images from seven years shooting with Luke Combs and broke down exactly which focal lengths produced his favorite shots. The results might surprise you, and they say something specific about how working professionals actually think about focal length versus how beginners assume they do. He also shares the two lenses he reaches for most on that job and explains exactly when and why he switches between them. That kind of real-world insight is harder to find than another chart of focal length recommendations.

Check out the video above for the full breakdown from Bergman, including his sports and wildlife lens picks and the one practice he recommends if you're still trying to find your own shooting style.