Getting what I see with my own eyes to translate to a photo.

[misterjones]

8 years and 3 days after signing up and I finally get around to asking a question...

I've taken numerous pics all around Metro Phoenix and now Las Vegas (where I currently reside). One thing that has been most annoying happens when I'm out and, let's say, it's rained and the smog and whatnot have been cleared from the air and the mountain ranges surrounding both valleys become amazingly clear. Absolutely huge, stunning views and great detail are all visible with the naked eye, so I'll pull over to take a shot... Mostly I'll fire off a shot while sitting at a light to capture it and what ends up on my camera or phone isn't the spectacular sight I witnessed with my two eyes.

To give an example:

I took this pic with my phone a couple of weeks ago:



I usually keep at least a point-and-shoot in the car with me (Kodak C913), if not my bridge camera (Fujitfilm Finepix S4500) but for whatever reason I left the house without either, and really it probably wouldn't have made a difference since both would have taken pretty much the same pic.

Now, the mountains off in the distance were huge to the naked eye, towering well above the light pole directly next to the black Kia Soul but when I snapped the pic... well... you can see the result.

It should have looked similar to this:

http://urixblog.com/p/2014/2014.03.28LVa/picture-8.jpg

What I saw with my eyes looked closer to ^^^ that, especially considering I was actually closer to those specific mountain ranges (Red Rock, Bridge Mt, White Rock Hills, and Mt Wilson) that the individual that took that pic was (I would have been on the other side of The Strip, realistically only a few miles away from the edge of Las Vegas right before you get to those mountains).

This also happens when I take pics of the moon as it rises over Sunrise Mountains. We've has some absolutely spectacular moon views, utterly huuuge on the horizon, but when you snap a pic it looks far away and small.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[480sparky]

Your cell phone shot was taken with a wide-angle lens, whereas the comparison image was taken with a 'short' telephoto. The latter is what 'compresses' the perspective.

Make Canon
Model Canon EOS 600D
Software Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.6 (Macintosh)
Creator Yury Golubinsky
Copyright (C) Yury Golubinsky
Exposure Time 0.0063s (1/160)
Aperture ƒ/8.0
Exposure aperture priority (semi-auto)
ISO equivalent 200
Exposure Bias none
Metering Mode Matrix
Flash Fired No (enforced)
Focal Length 70.0mm
Color Space sRGB
FocalPlaneXRes 5728.176795580111
FocalPlaneUnits 25.4
White Balance Auto
LensModel EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM
Date 2014-03-28 18:23:58 (no TZ)
Lens EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM
GPS Latitude 36,5,13.60,N (deg, min, sec)
GPS Longittude 115,8,55.17,W (deg, min, sec)




City Las Vegas
Province/State Nevada
Country United States




BTW, you're not supposed to post images here you don't have permission to. Change it to a link.

 

[zombiesniper]

@480sparky hit it on the head.

The longer the lens the more the appearance of compression will happen. This will make the distant objects (mountains) look much larger.

The image below is an extreme example I took with a 500mm lens. This made the mountain a much more dominating element than it was looking at this scene with the naked eye.

mountain by Trevor Baldwin, on Flickr

 

[dxqcanada]

The human Eye+Brain is very selective when processing what it see's ... what your head is adding up is bits and adding it all up into "collage" ... the camera does not see it that way. The skill of a photographer is using the tools to build that scene your head thought up.

 

[dxqcanada]

Oh, and just to add ... after 30 yrs of taking pictures, I can't get it all the time.

 

[misterjones]

Your cell phone shot was taken with a wide-angle lens, whereas the comparison image was taken with a 'short' telephoto. The latter is what 'compresses' the perspective.

Make Canon
Model Canon EOS 600D
Software Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.6 (Macintosh)
Creator Yury Golubinsky
Copyright (C) Yury Golubinsky
Exposure Time 0.0063s (1/160)
Aperture ƒ/8.0
Exposure aperture priority (semi-auto)
ISO equivalent 200
Exposure Bias none
Metering Mode Matrix
Flash Fired No (enforced)
Focal Length 70.0mm
Color Space sRGB
FocalPlaneXRes 5728.176795580111
FocalPlaneUnits 25.4
White Balance Auto
LensModel EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM
Date 2014-03-28 18:23:58 (no TZ)
Lens EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM
GPS Latitude 36,5,13.60,N (deg, min, sec)
GPS Longittude 115,8,55.17,W (deg, min, sec)




City Las Vegas
Province/State Nevada
Country United States




BTW, you're not supposed to post images here you don't have permission to. Change it to a link.

Noted and corrected.

So then, in theory, I should be able to shoot something like this with my bridge camera considering it's focal length taps out at 720mm, right?

 

[480sparky]

Noted and corrected.

So then, in theory, I should be able to shoot something like this with my bridge camera considering it's focal length taps out at 720mm, right?

Yes.

 

[otherprof]

8 years and 3 days after signing up and I finally get around to asking a question...

I've taken numerous pics all around Metro Phoenix and now Las Vegas (where I currently reside). One thing that has been most annoying happens when I'm out and, let's say, it's rained and the smog and whatnot have been cleared from the air and the mountain ranges surrounding both valleys become amazingly clear. Absolutely huge, stunning views and great detail are all visible with the naked eye, so I'll pull over to take a shot... Mostly I'll fire off a shot while sitting at a light to capture it and what ends up on my camera or phone isn't the spectacular sight I witnessed with my two eyes.

To give an example:

I took this pic with my phone a couple of weeks ago:



I usually keep at least a point-and-shoot in the car with me (Kodak C913), if not my bridge camera (Fujitfilm Finepix S4500) but for whatever reason I left the house without either, and really it probably wouldn't have made a difference since both would have taken pretty much the same pic.

Now, the mountains off in the distance were huge to the naked eye, towering well above the light pole directly next to the black Kia Soul but when I snapped the pic... well... you can see the result.

It should have looked similar to this:

http://urixblog.com/p/2014/2014.03.28LVa/picture-8.jpg

What I saw with my eyes looked closer to ^^^ that, especially considering I was actually closer to those specific mountain ranges (Red Rock, Bridge Mt, White Rock Hills, and Mt Wilson) that the individual that took that pic was (I would have been on the other side of The Strip, realistically only a few miles away from the edge of Las Vegas right before you get to those mountains).

This also happens when I take pics of the moon as it rises over Sunrise Mountains. We've has some absolutely spectacular moon views, utterly huuuge on the horizon, but when you snap a pic it looks far away and small.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The huge moon near the horizon is an optical illusion, though there is some disagreement among psychologists about why it appears so large low in the sky.

 

[480sparky]

The huge moon near the horizon is an optical illusion, ..........

That, or it's photoshopped.

 

[john.margetts]

Mostly I'll fire off a shot while sitting at a light to capture it and what ends up on my camera or phone isn't the spectacular sight I witnessed with my two eyes.

To get close to what your eyes see you need to use the 'normal' focal length for your sensor. With your Finepix S4500, that is a focal length of about 7 mm real or 40 mm FF equivalent ( I am not sure how your camera reports the focal length used, some cameras report the actual focal length and some the FF equivalent).

 

[dennybeall]

The human eye is roughly 50mm. Set your zoom lens to 50mm on a full frame or about 35mm on a crop-sensor and look through the viewfinder and then look at the scene. They should look close to the same.

 

[JoeW]

My favorite photography quote of all time is by the immortal Dorothea Lange (she shot the iconic photo from the Dustbowl) where she said "a camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera."

What makes photography an art (rather than just another form of xeroxing or making a snapshot or "capture") is that we compose--we see possibilities and then manipulate our camera to create the image that we visualize.

 

[Derrel]

If you want photos that have eye appeal, then use a telephoto lens. Many wide-angle shots have a far away and tiny background, which looks really really boring

 

[AlanKlein]

A telephoto could have done this. Of course, with an actual lens, it would have been clearer.

 

[ac12]

Your memory is conflicting with reality.
From a given FIXED point, any lens and your eye will give you the same perspective.
The only difference is the field of view and what is in the picture, which depends on the lens. A wide lens gives you a lot wider field of view and more foregound. A tele lens a narrow field of view, and little or no foreground.
The wide lens on your phone, by having a wider field of view makes the mountains proportionally smaller. But does not change its height relative to other objects in the picture.

To test this.
STAND in place and look at a scene with your eyes only.
Then take a pix with your camera.
Do the objects in the picture have the same size, relative to each other, compared to viewing with your eyes? They should.

To change perspective, you have to change your distance from the objects.
Look at the size of the far light post (4 poles down from the Kia), which is approx the visual height of the mountain.
When your car was a few hundred feet (or 4 or 5 light poles distance) back from where the pix was taken, the light pole next to the Kia in the pix, looked smaller, and similar to the visual height of the mountains.

As for the tall mountains. You need a longer lens to visually magnify the mountains. The wide lens on your phone is going in the opposite direction, giving you more sky and foreground, and less mountain.