[StiffLegged]

I have been thinking of the perspective taught in art classes. Remember drawing perspective? 5 Easy Ways to Draw Perspective - wikiHow

This assumes that you are at the plane of vision, a house 10 meters away and a house 20 meters away are twice the distance to you. Just using a long lens changes that. The magnification of the first house is much more. You could be 40 meters away and 50 meters from house two. That twice the distance is now only 1.25x the distance.

So can we say only Filippo Brunelleschi is true? Perspective in Art - Conjuring the Space | Widewalls

Sorry Swan, but changing the lens doesn’t change perspective: only changing your viewpoint will do that.

Here’s an experiment anyone can try - stand in one spot and photograph a scene with objects such as houses at different distances from you in the scene. Have the camera resting on something or fixed to a tripod so it’s facing the same way all the time. Take a photo with a set of different focal length lenses.

When looking at the results on your computer, note the field of view of the photo from the longest of your lenses and crop each of the rest to the same limits. The perspective in the finished, cropped images will be exactly the same as in the longest lens’s photo.

To change perspective, you have to change where you’re standing when taking the photo. That may have been what you meant, but it didn’t read that way.

[normhead]

Sorry Swan, but changing the lens doesn’t change perspective: only changing your viewpoint will do that.

That's an old bar room bet cliche.
As soon as you do what you really do, and fill the frame by moving close with the shorter lens, which is what everyone does, you fill the frame and that is what the long lens changes the perspective is about. When you do it as everyone does it, changing your position to keep the subject the same in the frame it changes the perspective.

That comment is just semantics, in that people shorten the concept by leaving out the "keeping the subject the same size" part, which in use isn't necessarily stated but isn't stated, as it's assumed no one is silly enough to not alter their position when they change lenses, unless it's telephoto work and the subject is too far away with the shorter lens.

If you change lenses and move so the subject fills the same amount of the frame, the long lens will shrink the back ground allowing you to remove distracting elements from the frame. It's standard photographic practice, at least among trained photographer.

changing the lens doesn’t change perspective: only changing your viewpoint will do that.

Anyone trained in studio photography understands what is meant and it's good practical advice.
But stated as it is, it's only useful for winning bets in bars.

The reason for changing positions when you change lenses is so obvious, whoever coined this phrase did't think anyone would be silly enough to misinterpret it. But that being said, the proper way to state it would be "Keeping the subject the same size, using a longer lens compresses the background." If you didn't take short-cut with by using the first phrase instead of the second, there would have been no confusion. This was originally Tony Northrup click bait by the way. 10 years ago smart Alecs were all over it.

I remember my first response when hearing it "Using a longer lens doesn't change perspective." But it dramatically changes the size of the subject. People who float that particular bit of knowledge always leave that part out. Same perspective but not the same size. So still a hugely different image. And in truth the perspective is changed, in that the wider lens shows so much more of the background. It's a completely different image.

I write this particular sentiment off as akin to a parlour trick, with no useful application, in that's it's based on a common phrase that over simplifies the issue to the point of uselessness on the basis of a practice , framing up with a long lens and then maintaining one's position while switching to a smaller lens, that no one in their right mind would employ and therefore anticipate in their consideration of the statement. It's a disservice to those trying to understand the topic.

It actually took me a few days after someone first wasted my time with this concept to figure out why it was so wrong. Don't feel bad if you got hooked.

[StiffLegged]

Not going to argue with you Norm, but please don’t rank me with Prof. Tone - I knew about this and used it to good effect long before he was a Northpup.

[normhead]

Not going to argue with you Norm, but please don’t rank me with Prof. Tone - I knew about this and used it to good effect long before he was a Northpup.

No problem.... just saving people from losing bets in bars.

[swanlefitte]

To change perspective, you have to change where you’re standing when taking the photo. That may have been what you meant, but it didn’t read that way.

After rereading how I wrote. I said it, but not explicitly enough to be clear without the reader doing additional thinking.

I said with a lens one house is 10 units away and the 2nd house is 20 units away. I said with a longer lens you can be 40 units away and 50 units away from the same houses.

Professor Blye would shake his head at me. He spent the entire beginning of a semester stressing how important being clear is. The first question in writing is, why write at all if it isn't understood?

[swanlefitte]

The other part I didn't mention is how the "true" perspective is defined.

The viewfinder magnification is defined as from a 50mm lens on 36mm film.
https://cameragx.com/2010/03/09/viewfinders-coverage-magnification-and-eye-relief-part-two/
Magnification: If the magnification was equal to 1, an object seen through the viewfinder would appear to be the same size as seen with the naked eye (with a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera). The photographer could even shoot with both eyes open. If the magnification ratio is lower than 1, then the object will appear smaller in the viewfinder than seen with the naked eye. Magnification has an impact on composition and focusing.

Pentaxians know it should be 43mm not 50mm so even from the begining all bets are off.

[Digitalis]

Strangely, even the objective approach requires PP*; unless, of course, one considers the in-camera default JPEG settings to bear some sort of divine sanction.

Marketing pitch: get cameras blessed by the pope.

Elizabeth II shoots Leica as I recall, so that could be taken as a tacit mark of divine approval. Though the blowback to doing this would mean debates over the virtues of specific brands of camera could literally turn into holy wars.

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Last edited by Digitalis; 03-12-2022 at 09:40 PM.

[normhead]

Marketing pitch: get cameras blessed by the pope.

Elizabeth II shoots Leica as I recall, so that could be taken as a tacit mark of divine approval. Though the blowback to doing this would mean debates over the virtues of specific brands of camera could literally turn into holy wars.

Over here, that might cost more sales than it encouraged.

[StiffLegged]

Marketing pitch: get cameras blessed by the pope.

Elizabeth II shoots Leica as I recall, so that could be taken as a tacit mark of divine approval. Though the blowback to doing this would mean debates over the virtues of specific brands of camera could literally turn into holy wars.

Her Majesty is the owner of a Leica M3: a film camera. I don't think she's going to spark any holy wars with that, since she's had it since the 1950s, nor with the Rollei 35 she was seen using in the 1960s. Having a camera blessed by the Pope carries inherent risks, as not all cameras are splashproof.