Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcguire | Hacker News Reader

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.)

View on HN

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!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com