Question To The Photographers Camera Angle Or Focal Length

I should have added that focal length will do also instead of the FOV.

Interesting question. Since I shoot with a zoom most of the time, I'm not as in touch with the number as you might guess. I'm thinking it's going to vary a lot but most of time fall between 50 and 100mm using 35mm camera norms.

Many thanks for the feedback HW, I am just after norms, as the cad software does not have any auto correction for distortion like lots of compound lenses and would probably operate more like a pinhole camera, so I am after common usage to give me a good average to start which is a proximity to what photographers find as a pleasing view angle for certain kinds of photography.

I mainly want to compare my own perceptions in cad where I can adjust to most angles and compare to good norms that photographers have found works well.

The "normal" field of view for a 35mm camera is 50mm. Normal meaning what a human sees that is in focus. Of course one has peripheral vision which is out of focus. Also 50mm will not distort the image like a wider angle lens would. The wider the lens (shorter focal length) the more the distortion. I hope this helps.

Distortion is not a consequence of the degree of zoom, it is an artifact created by the lens. There are endless ways in which lenses can project an image with all manner of different kinds of distortion. The most commonly used lens formulae either try to correct distortion - rectilinear projection - or allow a lot of curvature - fisheye projection. Because of the physics of optics, the most wide-angle lenses, 6mm or 8mm on standard 35mm bodies, are always fisheye. Longer lenses - certainly 50mm and above - are always rectilinear and there are some good 20mm rectilinears.
I believe the closest focal length to the human eye is actually about 43mm on a 35mm frame.
However, the "standard" focal length to match human vision depends on the size of the medium the image is projected onto. So for 6x6cm medium format film, 80mm is the norm, for 6x9cm 105mm is used, for 5x4inch film you are looking at something around 150mm. What matters is not the focal length but the angle of the field of view, which is something like 120 degrees for the human eye (you can easily google it).

Thank you for your feed Lawrence and Paul, it is all adding to a better understanding, I will start off by trying the 50mm and 43mm focal lengths and take it from there. Most of my print sizes are normally a ratio of 1 to 1.5 so 6x9cm at 105mm focal length may work well as a trial also.