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Home >> Learning >> e-Book on Photography Table of Contents Photography e-Book Chapter 17 - Perspective Perspective is an important part of being able to "see". Perspective is all about the distance between photographer and the subject. The choice of lens is an important factor in perspective but the example photos below will show how perspective changes as you alter the distance between yourself and your subject. The important factor to keep in mind is that if you take photos of your subject at a given distance away from it, your perspective will NOT change no matter which lens you use. Whether it be a wide-angle lens or a telephoto lens, your perspective will be the same so long as you remain at the same shooting distance to the subject. All that has changed is the magnification of the subject on film. Take two images of the subject with different lenses and all you need to do to get the same image from the wide-angle lens as the telephoto, is magnify the subject until they are the same size. You will find that the view is the exactly the same with no difference whatsoever in perspective. If you alter the shooting distance to the subject then your perspective has changed. It is easier for me to direct you to the sample images below to help understand what I am discussing. The more you use your lenses, especially the wide-angle ones, the more you will understand the nature of perspective and what exactly it is in the viewfinder you wish to emphasize and reveal in your image. Photojournalists love using wide-angle lenses to get in tight to the subject yet still be able to reveal the subject in its environment. It is just not the same for the photographer to sit back and use a telephoto lens to get the subject the same size. Although the use of a telephoto lens would be most effective to isolate the subject with its narrow angle of view, the perspective of the subject within its environment will have been lost. If you have the time to contemplate and reflect upon what it is you wish to capture on film, you can experiment with different lenses and see which one will convey your message or ideas across the best in your final image.
Print Perspective Perspective is also a factor in print sizes and the distance required to view the image properly, as in breathing space. It is said that the vast majority of prints made around the world are the small 3x5 or 4x6 types that people receive after dropping off their film at a one-hour processor (because the vast majority of film shot around the world are color negative types). These small 4x6 size prints are usually viewed in close proximity to the viewer, say about a foot from the eyes to the print. This comfortable viewing distance may in fact be the wrong perspective depending upon how the image had been taken. There is one rule of thumb I have come across to provide a guide as to how far away a print should be in order to convey proper perspective. That is to use the diagonal length of the print as the proper viewing distance, meaning that a 4x6 print should be viewed from a distance of about 7 inches and an 8x10 at a distance of 13 inches. However, I am not so certain that this a good rule of thumb to follow for one main reason, most of the time we will not know which lens has been used to take the image and this is an important consideration for proper viewing perspective. Now, certainly, the larger the print, the greater the distance required from the print to the viewer's eyes. One should not view a poster size print from 6 inches away, as we need to step back some feet in order to allow the eyes to take it all in but what if we had taken a portrait image with a very wide-angle lens? The resulting image on print viewed at rule of thumb distances will appear distorted, however if we were to bring the print closer to our eyes, the perspective of the image on paper will begin to lose its distortion and start looking "normal". Wide-angle lenses focus much closer than normal or telephoto lenses and images taken with wide-angles require a closer viewing distance to maintain proper perspective. The reverse is true of images taken with telephoto lenses as the focusing distance of telephoto's farther away than wide-angle or normal lense, so we must be farther away to maintain proper perspective. Try this with the example image below, a portrait taken with a 20mm wide-angle lens that from a normal viewing distance appears obviously distorted but will look normal when your nose is a scant few inches away from the screen. Of course, your eyes' minimum focusing distance must be fairly close to allow this to work. My eyes cannot focus closer than 6 inches and such close viewing gives me headaches so wide-angle portraits do not work for me.
One last note, proper viewing distance is why we can get away with lower dpi print resolution for large prints and why we need higher dpi resolutions for smaller prints. The closer the eyes are to a print, the more details we will notice and thus a smaller print that is held closer to our eyes will require much higher resolution to maintain its photographic appearance. A larger print is viewed from greater distances, such that our eyes cannot pick out all the micro details. The print can be "sloppier" and still appear as a photographic print. Billboard size prints are usually nothing more than a series of large dots when seen up close but since billboards are meant to be seen from great distances, we do not see the courseness of the actual print. |
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