"frederick" wrote:

Certainly. But you don't really 'see' with your peripheral vision. The
area that you _conciously_ see and focus on is approximately equivalent
to the 50mm angle of view.

No it's not.
The fovea centralis FOV is about 2 degrees, so what you focus on clearly
is much less than 50mm "equivalent".

And one's peripheral vision is way wider than 50mm equivalent: it's more
like 20mm or wider. I'm finding that (with care, lots of care) even 12mm (on
FF) can feel about right.

As pointed out further up the thread, that FOV is boring anyway.
If you look at interesting photos in most galleries, you'll typically find
that the FOV assumed to have been used in the photos was much longer - or
much shorter than "normal" focal lengths. Wedding and other snapshot
artists won't agree, it's subjective, and YMMV.

Still, a lot of great photos have been taken with the 50mm FOV. Here's a
photo I'm fond of (inexplicably, you'll probably find), although it's taken
with a 75mm lens (on 6x6 with an early 1950's Rolleiflex).

http://www.pbase.com/davidjl/image/37431099/large

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan