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Comment by phreeza | Hacker News Reader

On the contrary, I explicitly remember this effect making the rounds in many outlets in April:

https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-04-26-hvor-taet-er-folk-...

I'm not sure this was contrary to what the parent comment says. Back in April the newspapers and other media were regularly using photographs that made crowds and beaches look much more densly packed than they were.

This was being pointed out by articles like the one you linked to, but that doesn't negate original offense. Far fewer people were reading articles like this than were seing toxic scare-mongering photos on the front pages of major national newspapers.

It depends where you are I imagine. Some countries have cultures where any attempts to lessen the messaging in coronavirus news is on par with being morally wrong (or even dangerous). Other cultures are more critical or resistant. HN has a very diverse mix of users from a range of places.

Perspective distortion misuse was neither of these though. It was simply dishonest journalism which distorted the messaging everywhere: are people following lockdowns and distancing or not? How does this relate to case numbers? Who could know because the pictures being put out there meant nothing.

Yes we agree with each other.

This may, in fact, backfire in a couple of ways:

1. It may reduce societal pressure to isolate by making it seem only a minority of people are actually doing it (much like the broken windows theory)

2. It fuels distrust in media outlets. Deservingly so, even if machiavellianly this choice seems to serve the greater good.

"Misuse" is something of a judgment call though. Pretty much any photo makes choices of perspective, framing, etc. There are certainly cases of clear distortion but, especially in the context of distancing, arbitrary photos--even with "'normal"-ish focal lengths can tell very different stories depending upon where the camera is pointed.

If you're standing 100 feet away to use a movie-magic trick to make two objects seem next to each other when they're very much not, you're (edit: probably) being dishonest.

edit: when that standing next to each other is attempting to introduce a narrative that people are doing something contrary to what they're actually doing

I’m not particularly into photography so I would probably have never heard of that effect if it were not for HN. That’s why I keep coming back here, I always find something interesting!

A 300mm telephoto lens gives a narrower field of view than the standard eyeball, making objects in the field of view seem packed closer together. A 24mm wide-angle lens gives a wider field of view, making objects in the field of view seem farther apart. ("Objects in mirror are closer than they appear"? Yeah, same thing.) Both can be used for artistic effects as well as being dishonest. (I really like a 150-200mm lens for portraits; for one thing not having the camera and photographer nearby makes people look more natural.) A good match for the eye is a 50mm "standard" lens. (All lens sizes are for 35mm cameras; I don't remember what the correction factor is for my DSLR's CCD.)

1.5x if it’s an APS-C sensor, 2x if it’s a micro 4/3rds, and 1x if it’s full frame (this is most likely if you’re shooting Nikon or Canon, Fujifilm mirror-less are APS-C, Panasonic et al are m4/3)

How is it that people's heads look the same size when they can be so far apart? I guess I need to learn more about all this.

The relative sizes depend on the relative distance from the camera. Say you have two persons, one standing one meter in front of the other, and the photographer standing one meter in front of the frontmost person, shooting with a wide-angle lens so that the nearest person fills the frame. The far person is then twice as far away as the near person (2m vs. 1m), and will appear half the size of the near person (assuming they're the same size in reality!). The photographer then moves 50 meters away, and shoots with a (really!) long telephoto lens, so that the nearest person still fills the frame. The near person is now 50 meters away and the far person is 51 meters away, and will appear 50/51 of the near persons's size.

(This would still happen if the photographer kept the wide-angle lens, but then a lot more of the surroundings would have been included in the frame, making it obvious that the persons were far away. Whether tele/wide-angle "affects perspective" is a favourite topic of endless debate on photo-related Internet forums. The answer hinges on which parameters you maintain constant, and which ones you allow to vary.)

Thank you! That is a great answer.

What a great explanation. Thank you so much!

This article has way better examples than OP. Thanks for sharing!

The poisonous journalistic atmosphere which the GP referenced was precisely the impetus behind that much-needed exercise.

Damaging the trust in media and government is a classic "penny smart, pound foolish", and the next time the boy cries wolf things may go differently.

The media industry seems to be trapped in an enormous sub optimal Nash equilibrium.

Quarterly earnings are built on eyeball-hours so everyone is optimizing for short term maximization of eyeball hours.

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