Subject distance and perspective...

kelly1

Hello all,

I just thought this would be useful info for the beginners among us. I think most beginners, myself included, often don't think about how our distance from the subject combined with focal length, affects compostion and perspective. The site below illustrates this very well.

http://www.photozone.de/focal-length-and-perspective

We often use a zoom to avoid walking towards or away from the subject not realizing that changing our distance from the subject and focal length has a dramatic effect on how much of the background is included in the shot.

Another article here

Hope someone finds that useful!

Noel.

Mountainsandh

Kelly1 thanks for sharing ! Useful for me anyway... I'm trying to teach myself stuff all the time with sites just like that, but have been a bit lazy lately... so there you go, focal length, my next module .

edit : of course all to be dealt with on a vino-less night, that is, some other night

charybdis

This is why I don't like the expression "zoom with your feet".

Hugh_C

charybdis wrote: »

This is why I don't like the expression "zoom with your feet".

Why? Please explain. I use fixed lenses for all the beauty stuff I do and move around a lot. I use foot-zoom constantly.

kelly1

Yes, I think the whole point of my post was to illustrate that you need to zoom with your feet to get the right compositional perspective rather than rely on lens zoom.

charybdis

The point is that perspective is controlled by one and only one thing: subject distance.

Not focal length. Not angle-of-view. Subject distance.

If you change the focal length of a zoom lens to achieve your desired framing without changing subject distance the perspective is the same.

If you change the distance between the camera and subject to achieve your desired framing the perspective is different.

Changing focal length and changing subject distance do two different things.

"Zoom with your feet" implies that moving relative to your subject is the same thing as changing focal length. It isn't. It's just a sufficiently catchy saying that superficially seems to make sense so people parrot it without understanding its shortcomings as a term (c.f.: "nifty fifty", "exposure triangle", "bokeh", "lower number means larger aperture", etc.).

Hugh_C

charybdis wrote: »

The point is that perspective is controlled by one and only one thing: subject distance.

snip

It's just a sufficiently catchy saying that superficially seems to make sense so people parrot it without understanding its shortcomings as a term (c.f.: "nifty fifty", "exposure triangle", "bokeh", "lower number means larger aperture", etc.).

You're criticising a catchy saying using a platitude

I am acutely aware of where I want to be relative to my subject on a fixed lens, I know at what distance a subject will look good and I know where they'll start looking not-so-good.

I suspect you don't use primes often.

DaireQuinlan

Hugh_C wrote: »

You're criticising a catchy saying using a platitude

....

I suspect you don't use primes often.

Didn't we used to have a 'sitting back and eating popcorn' smiley ?

.Longshanks.

Topgear (and similar) use the subject distance and perspective effect a lot
Couldn;t get a link but this is the same idea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h9ZzYhvSyE

DaireQuinlan

kev_Longshanks100 wrote: »

Topgear (and similar) use the subject distance and perspective effect a lot
Couldn;t get a link but this is the same idea

The 'reverse dolly zoom', used to great effect in Jaws, and for the first time AFAIK, apparently Stephen Spielberg invented it specifically for that shot in Jaws. Though this is anecdotal and probably untrue

5uspect

They also use it in the pilot of BSG when the Galactica performs an FTL jump for the first time in decades.

charybdis

Hugh_C wrote: »

You're criticising a catchy saying using a platitude

I am acutely aware of where I want to be relative to my subject on a fixed lens, I know at what distance a subject will look good and I know where they'll start looking not-so-good.

I suspect you don't use primes often.

I use primes all the time. Every lens I've ever bought that didn't come with a camera is a prime lens.

If anything, one should be more aware of this when using primes.

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

The 'reverse dolly zoom', used to great effect in Jaws

Here's a bunch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y48R6-iIYHs