an example and comparison of wide and tele effects

[petrochemist]

And any combination of lenses and sensors have no set distortion.

That's not totally true, fish-eye lenses do have set distortion and there are others designed to compress horizontally more than vertically for wide screen filming. But with the exception of specialist lenses your argument hold true

 

[Didereaux]

Setting aside all the arguments as to what is or is not. It must be pointed out to all the knowledgeable ones (and there are some very knowledgeable folks around here) ALL of you are missing the point. I said in the title it is an effect, optical illusions are effects. many things are effects that appear to contradict physics or such. This thread is in the BEGINNER'S forum and I purposely used phrasing and terms that most beginners would run into in beginners books etc. The EFFECTS of different focal links is what was illustrated and NOT what caused those effects. Dammit folks consider where you decide to display your erudite-ness. As it stands now this thread has been hi-jacked and probably will be ignored by any beginners who might have wished to see a simple example. Beginners take a quick glance at a thread and when the 'experts' start arguing they leave that thread alone.

Thanks folks.

 

[Didereaux]

focal length gif - Google Search

Great example, Here's a more direct link to that page. Excellent demo and explanation of its usage in films.
Trippy Demo of Focal Length and Spatial Distortion | FilmmakerIQ.com

 

[jaomul]

Whatever the terminology and who is right and who is wrong, its a good example of the difference in look that a short and long lens gives when one wants to fill it in a frame

 

[astroNikon]

A few years ago I ran across examples of how the background gets compressed in a Tokina lens brochure.
Since it's older I'll give a screen shot of it here

They also had visual examples of:
- Depth of Field
- Angle of View
- Effective Focal Length in Relation to Sensor Size

 

[beagle100]

Didereaux is correct. Sorry Beagle & Tufopix.

Perspective is about the angle of view and that's strongly related to the focal length of the lens (as well as sensor size). A "wide" lens (relative to the "normal" focal length of the camera) will tend to stretch the sense of depth, make objects appear longer (if shot with a view from front to back as Didereaux's steam locomotive) and this does in fact result in the appearance that the engine is "longer" and that the cab at the back is a bit smaller (think about the rear-view mirror on the right-side of your car that says "objects in mirror are closer than they appear" -- that convex mirror is giving you a wide-angle perspective.) A "long" focal length does the opposite. The engine doesn't appear to be as long and the cab doesn't appear smaller as it did in the wide-angle view.
I realize you linked an article that claims the opposite. The author is misinformed. BTW, the author then goes on to show four images... and then explains that they "cropped" the images. But if you crop an image, it's analogous to changing the sensor size and THAT changes the perspective (remember that perspective is strongly tied to the true angle of view, which is based on a combination of focal length and sensor size.)

The author has managed to confuse themselves.

all I can say is perspective distortion changes are caused by distance, not lens, sensor size or cropping but to understand the concept you will have to do some more research.

 

[baturn]

I'm so confused. Is it OK if I just like the photos?

 

[Didereaux]

Whatever the terminology and who is right and who is wrong, its a good example of the difference in look that a short and long lens gives when one wants to fill it in a frame

THANK YOU!!!!! ...someone got it, finally! ')

 

[480sparky]

And any combination of lenses and sensors have no set distortion.

That's not totally true, fish-eye lenses do have set distortion and there are others designed to compress horizontally more than vertically for wide screen filming. But with the exception of specialist lenses your argument hold true

That's optical distortion, not perspective distortion. The optical distortion of fisheyes and special cine lenses are a result of how they render the perspective distortion.

 

[tufopix]

I'm shooting photos at a drifting event today, so I can't stick around. But I scribbled this little illustration on an envelope and slapped some text on it that will hopefully illustrate what I was trying to say. The OP did make a good comparison as to how shooting something using two very different focal lengths will change your composition. I hope this helps


Distance by tufopix on Photography Forum

 

[astroNikon]

makes you want to buy a bridge camera and forget the rest.

 

[Derrel]

It is very common for people to confuse perspective, which is based only on camera-to-subject distance, and mix it up with apparent perspective distortion. That is itself, a term: apparent perspective distortion, which is what didereaux's post is dealing with.

Two different terms. The ONLY WAY to alter perspective is by changing the camera-to-subject distance. Distance, distance, distance!!!!!!!!

Apparent perspective distortion is another term. Often confused with perspective.

There are so many on-line and printed sources these days, and a large percentage of them are flat out using the term perspective in an improper, half-assed way. Perspective is an old term that has come to be widely misunderstood, even by people who know a lot about photography in a practical sense. As fellow TPF member Ysarex has mentioned, there are many myths and half-truths and inaccuracies that are perpetuated every day, on-line, and in books.

Correct use of actual terms that have been around for hundreds of years versus how to actually shoot images that have different feeling to them is the subject of this post, and we have seen this converaation pop up here every six months or so for literally the last seven years!

Be that as it may, I though big D's post was a pretty good demonstration of what was once commonly called lenswork, a term that has sort of fallen out of common use. Petty good example photos, really, wonderful comparison between the size of the locomotive engineer in the tele shot as opposed to the wide-angle shot!

 

[beagle100]

It is very common for people to confuse perspective, which is based only on camera-to-subject distance, and mix it up with apparent perspective distortion. That is itself, a term: apparent perspective distortion, which is what didereaux's post is dealing with.

Two different terms. The ONLY WAY to alter perspective is by changing the camera-to-subject distance. Distance, distance, distance!!!!!!!!

!

yes, changes in perspective is all about distance, distance and distance
and not focal length, focal length and focal length