[HN Gopher] How does perspective work in pictures?
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How does perspective work in pictures?
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 184 points
Date : 2022-03-02 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aaronhertzmann.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (aaronhertzmann.com)
| belfalas wrote:
| Really interesting article! For anyone curious about perspective
| in art, see the book "Perspective Made Easy" by Ernest Norling.
| It is easy to follow and has simple helpful exercises.
|
| A more technical and challenging book is "How to Draw" by Scott
| Robertson. That one is good if you want more technical theory
| understanding (plus the illustrations are amazing).
| TrevorJ wrote:
| This is dancing around the real issue - there are many different
| district processes that our eyes use which fuse into a sense of
| 'being there'. Any attempt to compress this into a single
| monographic static image will be a compromise.
| dsign wrote:
| Ahh, I love this article. I'm among those that dislike all my
| photos with small objects that don't look as I see them. I guess
| building photo optics that do not use linear perspective is out
| of the question. I haven't got time to read all the papers they
| are referencing (currently searching for a new computer vision
| job, and there is so much in that area that I can't really read
| everything), but I wonder how many techniques to computationally
| change the perspective of the image depend on LIDAR depth
| information, how many on guessing depth via some other means
| (e.g. neural networks), and how many on neither?
| deadbeeves wrote:
| The article is close, but doesn't quite get there. The problem is
| not the image itself or how it's taken, but rather how it's
| displayed. When you look at the world through your eyeballs, your
| brain recreates the scene so that it wraps around an imaginary
| point in mental space, so to speak. Things that are to your right
| "appear to your right" in your mind. When you're looking at a
| photograph, regardless of how much field of view it was taken
| with, it's displayed in a very small portion of your entire field
| of vision, even if you're looking at it on a computer monitor;
| it's even worse if you're looking at it on a phone. You're
| basically always looking at it zoomed out. It would be possible
| to recreate the scene exactly as it would have appeared if your
| eye was where the camera was when the photo was taken, but you'd
| need to blow it up on a huge screen, like a movie theater screen,
| and stand fairly close to it. Then you'd be able to see that
| actually most lenses other than fisheyes have fairly narrow field
| of views.
| hammock wrote:
| An easy way to make your point is to do what "artistic types"
| in e.g. cartoons do to make a viewfinder to estimate a shot:
| use your thumbs and forefingers in front of your face to make a
| rectangular "window." Now recognize how much smaller this
| window is than your field of view.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| That's exactly how I came to understand the effect. I was
| looking at a picture of a sunset I had taken and wondering
| why the sun looked so much smaller than when I was there. I
| remembered that the sun, like the moon, is roughly the size
| of the thumbnail when the arm is completely stretched out, so
| I zoomed in the image until the sun was the right angular
| size, and the sizes of all the objects then appeared as in
| real life, only observed through tunnel vision.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Photography + VR headsets will be interesting.
| eurekin wrote:
| I'm wondering for years already, why there's no head mounted
| display for mirrorless
| codeflo wrote:
| I was looking for someone commenting this. There's no mystery,
| it's really just geometry. Imagine casting a ray from your
| eyeball to a pixel on the monitor. Then imagine the same ray at
| the same angle on the actual scene. If the pixel matches the
| correct part of the scene, then the image appears natural.
|
| But that's really a tiny field of view. Perhaps the easiest way
| to see this is that it's the same geometry as having a monitor-
| sized window in a wall at the same distance, and looking
| outside. That would be really tiny window, and you wouldn't
| expect to see much of the outside without getting a lot closer.
|
| As a result, most pictures are taken at a wider field of view
| than what would be natural for typical viewing distances, to
| show more of the scene. Which explains the distortions that
| make everything at a distance appear tiny.
|
| You fundamentally can't "solve" this without dramatically
| increasing the FOV that you're viewing things with -- VR being
| the obvious idea.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The mystery is "why can I view the world with my eyes and see
| a wide angle, straight lines, and "natural" perspective, but
| when I take pictures with a wide angle, everything looks
| "weird."
|
| You can throw away the straight lines and shoot with a
| fisheye lens (no straight lines, wide angle, fairly natural
| depth), you can crop in (depth fine, but now I'm missing
| stuff around the edges), and you can shoot with a wide
| rectilinear lens (wide angle, straight lines, "exaggerated"
| perspective).
|
| As far as I know, the answer is simply that your eyes _aren
| 't rectilinear_ but your brain fudges it to make straight
| lines seem straight when the image on our retina actually
| curves.
|
| The effect is most prominent when standing in a small room.
| It's impossible to take a single picture of it that conveys
| what you want: a wide rectilinear lens will exaggerate how
| big the room is (and look weird around the edges), a "normal"
| rectilinear lens will be so cropped in that you can't see
| most of the room, and a fisheye lens will make all straight
| lines curve, especially around the edges. None of them really
| represent the visual experience of being in the room. Just
| look at how weird real-estate listings can get when they try
| to show you a picture of a small bathroom.
| grumbel wrote:
| The problem isn't taking the photo, but that the size you
| are viewing the photo at is simply too small and flat.
| Human field of view is somewhere around 200x130deg, you are
| not going to capture that on a tiny flat bit of paper which
| might just be 40x30deg. Reaching the 200deg isn't even
| possible with a flat photo. You can try to make it
| aesthetically pleasing, but you can't make it accurate
| without making it bigger and curved.
|
| When you enlarge the photo and display it at the field of
| view it was captured at, as you can do in VR, the whole
| problem disappears and the photo just looks like the real
| world. Use two cameras and it'll even be in 3D.
| c1ccccc1 wrote:
| Probably a big part of it is that the high-resolution area
| of the retina is quite small. So in that small area, the
| perspective is close to perfect, and then we mentally
| stitch together a larger image by moving our eyes around.
| But the larger image that's stitched together is in the
| shape of a sphere rather than a flat surface, with each
| point on the sphere corresponding to a direction the eyes
| could be pointing.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Yes. Also image aspect ratio and the relationship between
| horizontal and vertical is complex. Our eyes themselves
| move reasonably comfortably 15 degrees in all directions
| (maybe a little less up), but peripheral vision is
| greater in width than height and we are used to turning
| our heads to see objects in horizontal field of view more
| than vertical.
| egypturnash wrote:
| An important thing missed here: according to the EXIF data in
| them, these photos are all taken with an iPhone XS. That means
| they are taken with a tiny wide angle lens. You'd get a very
| different shot if you took out a dedicated camera with a
| physically larger lens and a smaller angle.
|
| The overall thrust of this article _touches_ on this when it
| starts discussing different focal lengths, but the fact that the
| engineers at Apple made a particular set of choices with their
| lenses that are a compromise between "what can be achieved with
| a tiny flat lens measured in millimeters" and "what provides a
| mostly-acceptable image in _any_ situation ", and are very not
| the choices one might make for specifically photographing a
| portrait or a landscape or whatever, is really never remarked on.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| The size of the lens is actually completely irrelevant. Anyone
| who has done any 3D work can tell you the size of the lens has
| absolutely no effect on perspective. The mathematical model of
| a camera in a 3D renderer doesn't have a parameter for lens
| diameter. There's no way to make an image appear as if it has
| been taken by a really tiny camera or a really huge camera. At
| the worst the huge camera will not physically fit in certain
| spaces.
|
| All the size of the lens affects is how much light can come
| into the camera, which in turn affects the quality of the photo
| with less than ideal lighting conditions.
| codeflo wrote:
| Aperture size has an effect on depth of field (the degree to
| which points that are out of focus are blurred). I think in
| practical cameras, aperture size isn't constant as you vary
| camera size, so that makes the scale relevant. But I'm not
| 100% sure how photography terminology like "stops" maps to
| the underlying geometry, so take this with a grain of salt.
| thequux wrote:
| The "f/" in aperture settings literally stands for "focal
| length divided by ...". e.g, an f/2 aperture on a 50mm lens
| has a diameter of 25mm.
|
| One aperture stop corresponds to a scaling factor of
| sqrt(2), because the _area_ of the aperture scales with the
| square of the diameter, and halving the area results in
| half the light (and 1 /1.414... of the aperture diameter)
| roywiggins wrote:
| All else being equal, switching to a longer lens won't make the
| _relative_ size of the elements of the image change at all.
|
| You can simulate the results just by cropping photos taken with
| the wide iPhone lens. There will be no difference between the
| perspective of a cropped iPhone picture and an uncropped
| picture with a longer lens.
|
| Of course such cropping will be likely to throw stuff away from
| the borders of the image that you'd rather keep, because you
| composed before you cropped. To avoid losing stuff on the
| edges, you'd have had to stand further away from your subject,
| which happens naturally when you're shooting with a longer
| lens. But you could have stood further away, shot with an
| iPhone, and then cropped in, and the only difference between
| that and a "true" zoom lens is that it's probably blurrier
| because you are working with fewer pixels.
|
| (the above is only true for rectilinear lenses, it's the
| linearity of the perspective that means that zooming ==
| cropping)
|
| The article is about how when a human looks at a scene, you'll
| see quite a wide angle, but when you take a photo that covers a
| similar angle to what you're perceiving, you end up with an
| image that seems to exaggerate the sense of depth that you had
| at the time. This is at least partly because human eyes aren't
| rectilinear; you can shoot with a non-rectilinear lens but then
| all the straight lines you expect... aren't.
|
| A skilled artist can produce a scene with 1) straight lines 2)
| a similar field of view, and 3) "natural" depth, as in the
| Turner painting in the article. To do this you have to depart
| from linear perspective. You couldn't get Turner's painting
| just by standing further away; he's doing something rather more
| complicated.
| shuntress wrote:
| The article mentions "Correct" perspective several times and
| seems like it is leading into an explanation of why 50mm is
| generally accepted as the most natural match to the human eye's
| perspective. But, it never really gets there.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Yeah, it's sort of a semi-conventional (and somewhat
| controversial) statement in the film/photo world to say that
| 50mm lens on a full frame sensor/35mm stock is "what people
| see." Some argue it's closer to 35-40mm. Some argue it's all
| moot. Maybe he ultimately just decided not to firmly stick by
| it haha
| thequux wrote:
| You can figure out "natural" focal length by taking a printed
| photograph, holding it at a comfortable viewing distance, and
| measuring that distance. Now, scale all of those distances
| down until the photo is the size of your imaging surface
| (24x36mm for 135 film, better known these days as "full-
| frame").
|
| Normally, for a 4x5" photo, you'll naturally hold it about 6"
| from your face, which is pretty close to 150mm. Ergo, the
| "normal" lens for 4x5 cameras was 150mm. If you scale that
| down to the "35mm" 24x36 frame, though, you'll discover that
| that's closer to 40mm. This is not a mistake; IIRC, one of
| the early 135 camera makers found it easier to make a 50mm
| lens than a 40mm lens, and it's stuck ever since.
|
| It so happens that a normal lens has a FOV of about 1 radian,
| so the normal focal length is approximately the diagonal of
| the image surface. A proof of that is left as an exercise for
| the reader.
| wyager wrote:
| Ignoring "non-geometric" effects like depth of field, the only
| optical parameter that matters here is the visible angle (a
| function of focal length and crop factor).
|
| Parameters like the size of the aperture are massively
| important in general, but not for determining the relative size
| of objects within the scene.
| doomlaser wrote:
| One of the coolest things about the Renaissance was the discovery
| of how to render perspective in drawings and paintings. The
| technique was spread greatly by the Italian book _de Pictura_ ,
| written by the humanist and artist Leon Battista Alberti in 1435.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_pictura
|
| It reminds me of viral art tutorials you see spread on Twitter
| today, for things like video game artists and developers. The
| illustrations still hold up, hundreds of years later:
| https://twitter.com/Doomlaser/status/978211776167923712
|
| Prior to this discovery and the book, Italian paintings had a
| very muddled perspective, because people just didn't know how it
| worked. You'd also often see Madonna and Child paintings with an
| absurdly large baby, to signal divinity:
|
| https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/4...
|
| https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/frame-preview/7859545.jpg?sk...
| TehShrike wrote:
| Well, this blew my mind.
|
| Are there any iOS camera apps that will let me experiment with
| taking "natural perspective" photos?
| spython wrote:
| Not quite the same, but I quite enjoyed PicPlane
| https://blog.mattbierner.com/pic-plane-1-1/ by Matt Bierner who
| has quite a few of similar experimental visual perception apps.
| namanyayg wrote:
| +1. Any android apps? I've noticed this so much in landscape
| photography it hurts.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Reminds me of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26795290
| the FOVO Renderer that uses a variable zoom based on 2D distance
| from the center of focus, which is more similar to human vision.
| samatman wrote:
| A sentence at the end of the article helped me understand why
| looking at photos on a 12.9" iPad feels uniquely pleasurable to
| me: I can, and naturally do, hold the device such that the image
| fills my focal length.
|
| Phones are of course too small, but my laptop screen, while
| larger, isn't as nice, even for photos in landscape perspective,
| because it's subjectively smaller in terms of the field of view
| it fills. I'm estimating I naturally use a laptop about twice as
| far from my eyes as an iPad.
| globular-toast wrote:
| This makes me think of cinema. Most people who watch films at
| home watch them on a far smaller screen than they were made for
| and the picture encompasses a far smaller portion of the field
| of view. Cinemascope films are supposed to fill almost all of
| the horizontal field of view. IMAX films are supposed to fill
| your entire field of view (extending right into the
| peripheral).
|
| I'm sure many people have tried, like me, to sit closer to the
| screen so it fills more of your field of view. But even though
| the angle might be the same, the experience is not. This is
| true even if you view with one eye. So it makes me think there
| is something else at play other than just viewing angles.
| kingcharles wrote:
| This article was fascinating and I can easily see this being the
| next feature that smartphone manufacturers will add to their
| camera apps. Most of the time I'm taking a photo I'm trying for
| something that will look really cool when I post it online, I'm
| not after a scientifically "accurate" representation of the
| scene.
|
| Smartphone hardware has hit a temporary wall that might last
| another 5 or 10 years, software is the only battleground right
| now.
| pier25 wrote:
| Off topic but the lighthouse in the video is at the Cap de
| Formentor in Mallorca.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formentor_Lighthouse
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Most of this article is not very informative, it boils down to
| the fact that to get better photos you should just use a longer
| focal length aka zoom in a bit and also take a few steps back.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| did you even read it? it says nothing of the sort
| dang wrote:
| Would you kindly stop breaking the site guidelines? You've
| been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and we've had to ask
| you repeatedly not to.
|
| In this case you broke this one: " _Please don 't comment on
| whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the
| article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article
| mentions that."_"
|
| More generally, you've been breaking this one: " _Be kind.
| Don 't be snarky._"
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| kingcharles wrote:
| There has been a lot of press around the HN moderation,
| mostly shock at the small size of the team doing it, but
| also around the bigger point, which is the care that HN
| shows about keeping its community in some sort of order.
|
| I've built and run huge online communities in the past, and
| they have died by 1000 paper cuts. Little bits of snark
| building up like fat on the walls of an artery until the
| clot ruptures. I've tried installing moderators I trusted,
| but without exception each one would turn into a fascist
| dictator stomping on accounts until everyone feared to
| speak. I had to fire them all.
|
| The biggest problem here is that HN moderators are not
| replicable or replaceable. There is a quote I can't find
| about how the type of person who _wants_ to be a politician
| is exactly the sort you don 't want. The reason HN mods are
| so good is because they didn't want the job, they fell into
| it.
|
| But it also has to be heartbreaking work, like those in the
| Third World who moderate the main social networks watching
| beheadings and child abuse all day. Eventually it will take
| its toll and I don't know how the fuck HN will operate when
| it has to find replacements.
| dang wrote:
| I thought of some things to say in response to this but
| I'm late for a training I'm in. Hopefully I'll remember
| to come back here later.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| My apologies. I haven't been in the best of moods lately. I
| will stick more firmly to the guidelines in the future. I
| really appreciate the civility of the discussion here
| compared to the rest of the net, and I want to keep it that
| way.
| gfody wrote:
| appreciate calling out middle brow dismissals which is a
| uniquely hn problem and probably too subjective to write
| a policy against
| dang wrote:
| That is hardly a "uniquely hn problem"! that is a human
| nature problem. And there is a guideline against it:
|
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of
| other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us
| something._"
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
|
| That's a direct reference to pg's original concept of
| middlebrow dismissal. We just changed the word from
| 'middlebrow' to 'shallow' because the word 'middlebrow'
| often comes across as a putdown and also often comes
| across as labeling a person rather than a post.
|
| Commenters who've actually read an article are always
| welcome to respond with accurate, interesting information
| from the article. That's a fine contribution. What's not
| fine is the "did you even read the article" internet
| trope.
| Gabriel_Martin wrote:
| GabrielMtn wrote:
| No to be preachy, but if you're struggling a lot make
| sure you're doing enough self care, I like long walks,
| it's so easy to forget to make time when so much is
| happening in the world.
| shuntress wrote:
| To help contextualize this response: The entire opening of
| the article feels like an extremely heavy handed introduction
| to "Photography 103 - Focal Length and How to Use It" without
| ever really explaining focal length even while a basic
| understanding of focal length & "compression" remains
| relevant to the topic the article veers into.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| They do have a point. It's just "beating around the bush"
| so much. Focal length, distortion, projection. I guess I'm
| just too cranky for it.
| shuntress wrote:
| I should have been more clear. I'm basically agreeing
| with you. It feels like the article is constantly about
| to say something like _" Here's an example where I used a
| 50mm and you can see how much more closely it matches the
| painting and my recollection"_ or something like that
| before then going on to talk about how perspective in
| photography is essentially a tradeoff with field-of-view.
| But it... just doesn't do that and so ends up with this
| awkward feeling mismatch with reader expectation (for me,
| at least).
|
| I don't necessarily begrudge the article for it but I do
| share your frustration.
| gfody wrote:
| this is fascinating stuff, the software experiments made me
| wonder if lightfield cameras will do better or at least enable
| smarter perspective algorithms
| Cieric wrote:
| I ended up reading one of the referenced articles too since it
| captured my interest
| https://www.gamedeveloper.com/disciplines/fovo-a-new-3d-rend...
| all of this looks interesting. I would love to add these
| correction and similar to my game engine to experiment with it,
| but fovotec seems to have to be paid/contacted for. I might try
| and replicate what the author of the main article showed at the
| end. Does anyone know of any more references to the 3d rendering
| side of this topic?
|
| Edit: Added words for clarity.
| kwertyops wrote:
| It looks like Unreal Engine (which is not open source, but you
| can get access to the source code) has a "Panini Projection"
| which does something similar:
| https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/RenderingAndGraphic...
| ISL wrote:
| Perspective is a huge challenge in photography, in some respects
| a central challenge.
|
| Here's [1] an image, made with a rectilinear lens, which manages
| to convey oodles of depth and structure. It is difficult to
| overstate how challenging it can be to express that level of
| depth in a flat image.
|
| When people talk about how a focal-length "compresses" or
| "exaggerates" an image, what they're really talking about is
| perspective. Each field of view carries with it its own
| perspective.
|
| Variable focal-length ("zoom") lenses encourage us to select our
| subject and composition first, then choose a perspective to
| match. Frequently, it is more important to begin with our desired
| subject and the perspective with which we wish the viewer to see
| it (focal-length), then figure out how to build a composition to
| match. A 24-70 mm lens isn't really a lens, it is at least six
| lenses with significantly-different perspectives: 24, 28, 35, 40,
| 50, and 70mm, each of which can take a lifetime to master.
|
| One can deliver the perception that Hertzmann is after with a
| rectilinear lens, but it isn't easy. Composition, lighting, and
| dodging/burning are all tools to that end.
|
| Think about your memory of the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square, now
| look at the image [2]. I bet he's a much smaller part of the
| frame than you recall, yet he utterly dominates your perception
| of the image, even when you look at the actual rectilinear image.
|
| [1] https://www.phillips.com/detail/HENRI-CARTIER-
| BRESSON/NY0405...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
| Daub wrote:
| > When people talk about how a focal-length "compresses" or
| "exaggerates" an image, what they're really talking about is
| perspective. Each field of view carries with it its own
| perspective.
|
| Completely agree. What is happening when the focal length of a
| camera is changed is that the distance of the vanishing points
| relative to the scene is changing.
|
| I teach perspective in my drawing class. Few subjects are as
| difficult to convey. Using 3d animations has helped a lot...
|
| https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/perspective...
| paulmd wrote:
| The "dolly zoom" is a very effective way to convey this imo.
|
| https://filmschoolrejects.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/01/Jaw...
|
| https://filmschoolrejects.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/01/Fel...
|
| https://screen-queens.com/2017/08/24/how-the-dolly-zoom-
| chan...
|
| There's also some rather neat series that play with
| perspective. Don't have any at hand but google:
|
| https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/exploring-how-
| foc...
|
| https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7d67c8_1d09b657f6a04e6fb8.
| ..
|
| The way I've always explained it to people as a photographer:
| your position with regard to the subject determines the
| perspective, which is the relationship between objects in the
| composition. Your choice of focal length determines what
| field of view/image area of that perspective that you want to
| capture.
|
| And yes, to agree with a parent comment, this is something
| that zoom lenses have rotted the brains of many photographers
| on. People stand wherever is convenient and then zoom to fit
| the subjects, rather than thinking first about how they want
| the elements to be placed within the image.
|
| It's hugely beneficial to work with a 3-lens kit or something
| similar (eg 28mm, 50mm, 105mm) to really force you to think
| about what you want from a particular exposure.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > When people talk about how a focal-length "compresses" or
| "exaggerates" an image, what they're really talking about is
| perspective. Each field of view carries with it its own
| perspective.
|
| This is kind of a misconception because what creates
| perspective distortion is not a given field of view, but the
| distance to the subject. That's why short (50-100 mm) macro
| lenses have a lot of perspective despite a clearly tele angle
| of view; you get very close to the subject. Someone using a 55
| mm macro lens for photography of small products tends to be
| pretty obvious because of the strong perspective, things look
| distorted and "bulging".
|
| Of course subject size / angle of view => distance so it still
| kinda works.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| And, if you used an infinite zoom macro lens on a subject
| infinitely far away, it would not have perspective at all but
| instead appear as an isometric view. Where does one find an
| infinitely large lens? Don't worry, you can't afford it
| anyway. It costs infinite money.
|
| Jokes aside, the math on this really works out. Orthogonal
| projection is the limit as d tends to infinity of perspective
| projection.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| Yeah, I was going to point out that out when he talked about
| the portrait. It's not really about the focal length but
| about the distance you normally look at people (although your
| brain does a lot of compensation for wonky perspectives).
| Focal length doesn't change the perspective, but it just
| crops the image. Your feet changes the perspective.
| grumbel wrote:
| Tank Man is not a good example here, as it is not just one
| image. People might remember [1], but never seen [2] or not
| even be aware that there is a full video of the event [3] as
| well. And of course depending on where you viewed it, it might
| have been cropped, photoshopped or taken from the video.
|
| [1]
| https://img.timeinc.net/time/images/covers/asia/2001/2001011...
|
| [2] https://miro.medium.com/max/1024/1*yMZA-
| hOHadTkNrGrSKriBw.jp...
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk
| spoonjim wrote:
| No, the Tank Man picture isn't surprising at all. The defining
| property of that image is that he is small, but willing to
| stand up to those tanks. My memory was correct -- it is a
| picture of a very small object standing in front of several
| extremely large objects.
| zokier wrote:
| I remember reading bit more on the work from fovotec authors
| (Pepperell et al), and while there are some interesting ideas in
| there, the majority of papers etc had heavy
| snakeoil/pseudoscience smell. It would be nice if someone grabbed
| those ideas and took a more rigorous approach to solve the same
| problems.
|
| That being said, the blog post is nice survey of the wider field
| so that's nice at least.
|
| Previous discussion on "FOVO" rendering (which has high overlap
| with the topic) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26795290
| agency wrote:
| I've noticed this a lot at home. I live in western WA and am
| lucky to have, on a clear day, a pretty breathtaking view of Mt.
| Rainier. But pictures never do justice to the sense of scale you
| get in person. It looks enormous on the horizon but in pictures
| it's rather small and mundane.
| jcims wrote:
| Same with photos of the moon.
| parenthesis wrote:
| The standard trick is to have something in the foreground.
| Several of the pictures on Mount Rainier's Wikipedia page do
| this.
|
| For example, trees in the foreground:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Rainier_panorama_2....
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nisqually_Glacier_0902.JP...
|
| A settlement in the foreground:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Rainier_over_Tacoma...
|
| Whereas, something like this
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Rainier_sunset.jpg is
| more abstract and doesn't give the same sense of scale.
| Kayou wrote:
| What lense do you have to take your picture ? You might want to
| zoom a bit to make it look like you see it, at least a 100mm
| equivalent I would say.
| function_seven wrote:
| I think this is what separates a good photographer from...
| me.
|
| I've tried various zoom levels before--and aspect ratios,
| focal lengths, etc--but I can never capture in an image what
| I'm seeing with my eyes. Either the enormous mountain is a
| tiny feature off in the distance, or it fills the frame and
| all context is lost. I can't seem to find a framing that
| communicates both the grandness of the subject, and the
| larger context it's situated in.
|
| Obviously a 2D, cropped image of the landscape is going to
| have to lose information compared to my 3D, panoramic view of
| it. But I also know I've seen good photos of these types of
| things. What are those photographers doing to capture that?
| [deleted]
| chucksta wrote:
| Images are often stacked too to achieve proper focus
| throughout the picture. A lot of photos you see aren't
| physically possible to get in 1 shot.
|
| https://photographylife.com/landscapes/focus-stacking-
| tutori...
| ISL wrote:
| It may help to know that it isn't easy to do.
|
| Two things that might help your images say what you'd like
| them to say:
|
| 1) For depth, try making images that have a "foreground,
| middle-ground, and background". The 24-28mm-equivalent
| lenses on smartphones are a perfect training ground for
| this kind of composition, as it is easier to select
| foreground elements.
|
| 2) Dodging and burning: The human eye is drawn to bright
| parts of an image. Gently darkening things that are less-
| important and gently highlighting things (and paths) that
| are more important can have a huge impact on the perception
| of an image. The Snapseed app, again on a smartphone,
| offers a very-intuitive interface (look for the "brush"
| tool) for learning to dodge and burn.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > I can never capture in an image what I'm seeing with my
| eyes. Either the enormous mountain is a tiny feature off in
| the distance, or it fills the frame and all context is lost
|
| Try adding a sense of depth by having a foreground, middle
| and back.
|
| Look at good landscape photos of mountains or other large
| features and you'll see they almost always do this. By
| having near, mid and far elements of interest you add a
| sense of scale to the photo.
| aeturnum wrote:
| If you like this there's actually a lot of work on this kind of
| topic in media studies! I particularly liked Nonhuman
| Photography[1] by Joanna Zylinska.
|
| [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/nonhuman-photography
| mabub24 wrote:
| This is a topic where having knowledge of art history helps quite
| a lot. One could make an entire university course around the ways
| artists have grappled with perspective over time. Just coming to
| grips with the fact that linear perspective is something we learn
| to understand as "natural", as communicating a scene or image in
| such and such a way, despite it being an artistic technique for
| representing 3d shapes on a 2d surface from a fixed point(s) of
| view, can be a big way to get people over the hump and to
| appreciate non-representational art, or even just the works of
| 20th and 19th century modernist painters like Picasso or Cezanne.
| f154hfds wrote:
| Linear perspective has some fun implications that I think about a
| lot.
|
| Apply a linear operator to a line and you get another line. This
| is obvious but the inverse is also true: if a line is a result of
| a linear operator the input was also a line. This is fun to think
| about when looking at jet contrails and bridges, the milkyway and
| pretty much any curve you have looked at your whole life. If it
| isn't straight as you see it then it's not straight in reality.
| leni536 wrote:
| > For example, here's Turner's High Street, Oxford and a
| photograph from the same spot, taken 200 years later
|
| Those are not from the same spot. The painting is from further
| back, and captures a narrower field of view.
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