Re: Lens Whopper

[T3D Michael Kersenbrock <michaelk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Bob Howard quotes that recent Canon lens book as saying:
> "Remember short lenses exhance perspective and long lenses flatten 
> it."
> I hope that everyone here realizes that the quoted saying is
> essentially a fallacy: perspective is a function of object
> distance; lens length merely changes the angle of view.
> That is quite a whopping misstatement to find its way
> into an authoritative book.  The author(s) probably know
> huge amounts of trivia on individual lenses, but have
> missed out on some fundamentals.

I suspect there isn't any error at all, and it's a matter
of writer's perspective in terms of a misunderstanding of
the independent variable.

For the "same" image (say, three people standing in front
of a fountain), that image is flattened if taken with long
lenses, and is "enhanced" if taken with a short lens.  Why?
Because to get the "same" image in each case, the location of
the camera is very different -- and that changes perspective.

When read that way, the quote seems reasonable.  From most
camera-books point of view, one thinks of an image one wants
to capture and then changes everything else to attain it with
the attributes envisioned. 

Mike K.


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