You can never go wrong with a 50mm ;D

IMHO, a 35mm lens is an interesting compromise, specially for interior shots. Anyway, you can't go wrong with any of these 3 focal lengths for single prime shooting. The rest is up to you ;)

@AlbertZ

A 50mm on a GH2 does not give you the field of view of a 50mm on 4:3 35mm motion picture frame; a 50mm on a Gh2 is more of a telephoto, with telephoto characteristics. With a 50mm on a GH2, you'd need to set the camera up 3 houses away to get an Ozu wide shot of a family around a table,

To the best of my knowledge, the "normal" lens for 1.85 35mm motion picture film is around 32-35mm. The crop factor with a GH2 is I believe about 1.2 (though you seem different figures), which means "normal" for the GH2 should be around 25-28mm.

But certainly test, before you spend money.

Thank you @Gabel!! Finally I've understood: the issue is the difference between the old ratio 1.33 and the native GH2 16:9 sensor. You can't emulate (ideally) a 1,33 frame with the same perspective and field on a GH2 because its native sensor has a different ratio. In these sense, Psycho seems to be a different matter since Hitchcock used a 50mm on a 1,66 ratio frame, shot seems more "close" and "tight" indeed! I was curios about Robert Bresson's film "Mouchette": he says he used a 50 mm lens throughout the film to get very flat images, however the ratio is 1,66. If you watch it,you have a tight "75mm look", just like in Psycho...

It gets even more confusing, because Psycho was framed for 1.37 TV ratio, but cropped for theatrical exhibition (and there's a debate over what Hitchcock really intended).

As Gabel notes, what's "normal" to the eye in a 1.37 ratio versus 1.85, is going to be different, because of that vertical. You'll need a wider lens on 1.85 to get an equivalent sense of space, even as that broadens the horizontal.

And some claim that that 50mm was never regarded as "normal" on 35mm motion picture film because it most closely approximates human vision. It was "normal", they argue, simply because it was the inherited standard.

So the other question is, do you want a shot which looks "normal" in the sense of approximating human vision, or one which replicates the classic 1.37 50mm look?

@jrd: I know people have discussed what aspect ratio Psycho was intended to be in, I would guess 1.85:1 would be the intended one (as it was the standard for projecting "flat" in the US) and Hitchcock's earlier films of that decade had all been done in that ratio. And yes, the reason 50 was called a normal was definitely an artefact of old thinking, compared to what it actually gave you. To add to the confusion, Hitchcock did like 50s as they were close to our vision, or was on the VistaVision cameras he had shot most of the films in that decade.

Formats always makes lens choices more complicated. On Super 35 a 32 to 35 would correspond with the field of view of a "normal" lens in 16:9 or 1.85:1, while a 28 would give you that with an academy gate matted to that kind of widescreen. But in 2.39:1 it's more complicated. When shooting flat one might use a wider lens, say 24-28 to get a more normal field of view (on Super 35 size) to correspond to the "lost" vertical space, while on an anamorphic a 50 is the general normal size and anything below that becomes wide-angle and rather distorted, due to the 2x squeeze horizontally effectively giving the field of view of a 25mm horizontally but with the Depth of Field characteristics and vertical field of view of a 50mm on a gate slightly smaller than 1.33:1 Academy gate. Head hurting yet?

@itimjim: Favorite for what? For a "normal" field of view?

@gabel Favourite for all round narrative usage. Gives me about 60-70mm vertical and 45-50mm horizontal.

Don't let someone like Steven Soderberg or Gus Van Sant get wind of this conversation, they'll take up the challenge and do a shot for shot remake of "End Of Summer" on GH2, and we don't want that! Also, AlbertZ, I'm sure you realize this, but to get the look of Ozu, a lens is going to get you about a thousandth of the way there, and he's pretty, y'know, inimitable, if quietly so. These ratios hurt my head. People must love math.

Well, live and learn. I just had a look at a few minutes of Ozu's "Late Spring". There's no way anyone could reasonably describe that 50mm as a "normal" lens, if "normal" means "like human vision" -- it has all the obvious characteristics of a mild telephoto, with all the foreshortening you'd expect of a telephoto. The one wide master shot of characters kneeling around a table is shot down a long hallway -- looks like the camera is 20 or 25 feet away, for by now obvious reasons.

A rough calculation suggests you'd get about the same horizontal coverage from a 42mm on GH2. How well this level of telephoto compression would work in a 16x9 ratio as the standard lens, even if you found some compromise with the vertical dimension, is another question, though Bresson used it in the 1.66 ratio.

@Gabel Actually, when we we try to replicate a typical indoor shot, we forget that usually directors shoot at a very long distance in a set, not in their bedroom ;)

@kount_michula Nice!

I'd say the GH2 is a bit too clean for the style you were going for, but still, really nice photography and grading.

This is getting confusing.... It's impossible to believe most of Psycho was shot with a 50mm -- most of the shots look much wider. In the opening hotel room scene, one or two shots look like 50mm. But there isn't much more of it.

As far as I can tell, the 50mm claim comes down to one source, a book on Psycho. I wonder if it's a myth?

I've seen Vivre Sa Vie by Jean Luc Godard...it has a 4:3 ratio and seems to be shooted mostly with a 50 mm! (I mean 50 mm + GH2 format)..very tight shots by cinematographer Raul Coutard in this film...