- #36
sophiecentaur
Science Advisor
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This thread is a classic example of nerdy vs arty. (CP Snow would turn in his grave) Both views are right - from their 'perspective' or wrong. Why are people getting so aerated about it?
In practice, many pictures taken with short focus lenses look more distorted (bulbous) and many of those taken with long focus lenses look 'flat'. That's just because you stand in different places to take the pictures of the same object.
If you watch a lot of TV pictures and then see just how close up the camera is and how small the studio sets are, it goes against intuition and experience with standard (pre-zoom) film cameras. If you correct for typical lens distortions - such as 'barrel', you can avoid much of the close-up distortions. Photoshop etc. can do a great job of fooling the viewer as to the focal length of the lens that was used.
"Perspective" is a red herring; it is not the quantity that counts here. I don't think it is really even a Scientific Term; it was used by artists who were trying to describe how they could draw pictures which made distant and near objects look 'right. I think the term was taken up by the technical camera brigade and is now used too loosely by non technical users - just like 'momentum', 'power' and 'energy'.
Long shots of a subject show more of the edges and sides of it than will close shots. (Just as the Horizon gets nearer and nearer, the lower you are standing. Noses 'stand out' with a close / wide angle shot because there are bits of the sides of the nose that you just don't see (and bits of the inside can be seen which can't be seen with a long shot).
You (eye and brain) use what can be termed perspective and parallax to give a clue, in real life, about the relative positions of objects. A single photograph or even a movie sequence, can mislead the brain into all sorts of conclusions and paradoxes which could easily be resolved if the viewer had more control of the camera position at the time - e.g. move from side to side a bit. Once your brain has made sense of a scene, the relative sizes are more or less eliminated from your consciousness of the scene (all cricket players look the same size to the crowd).
In practice, many pictures taken with short focus lenses look more distorted (bulbous) and many of those taken with long focus lenses look 'flat'. That's just because you stand in different places to take the pictures of the same object.
If you watch a lot of TV pictures and then see just how close up the camera is and how small the studio sets are, it goes against intuition and experience with standard (pre-zoom) film cameras. If you correct for typical lens distortions - such as 'barrel', you can avoid much of the close-up distortions. Photoshop etc. can do a great job of fooling the viewer as to the focal length of the lens that was used.
"Perspective" is a red herring; it is not the quantity that counts here. I don't think it is really even a Scientific Term; it was used by artists who were trying to describe how they could draw pictures which made distant and near objects look 'right. I think the term was taken up by the technical camera brigade and is now used too loosely by non technical users - just like 'momentum', 'power' and 'energy'.
Long shots of a subject show more of the edges and sides of it than will close shots. (Just as the Horizon gets nearer and nearer, the lower you are standing. Noses 'stand out' with a close / wide angle shot because there are bits of the sides of the nose that you just don't see (and bits of the inside can be seen which can't be seen with a long shot).
You (eye and brain) use what can be termed perspective and parallax to give a clue, in real life, about the relative positions of objects. A single photograph or even a movie sequence, can mislead the brain into all sorts of conclusions and paradoxes which could easily be resolved if the viewer had more control of the camera position at the time - e.g. move from side to side a bit. Once your brain has made sense of a scene, the relative sizes are more or less eliminated from your consciousness of the scene (all cricket players look the same size to the crowd).