N-Photo

Exaggerating and compressing perspective

You can take these

perspective effects even

further if you have longer

or wider focal length lenses

than are available with your

standard zoom. By getting

extremely close to a

subject and using a

wide-angle lens you can

exaggerate the apparent

distance between the

subject and the

background, while shooting

from a much greater

distance and using a long

focal length will compress

the perspective, making

the background appear

much closer than it does to

the naked eye (see right).

As you’d expect, the wider

or longer the lens you use,

the more pronounced the

result will be.

What you’ll learn

How changing your

viewpoint really

transforms the

perspective of your

shots, enabling you

to get completely

different results

by using different

viewpoints, even if

you then change the

focal length to keep

the subject the same

size in the frame.

What you’ll need

A subject and

background where

you have space to

alter your viewpoint,

but still have a clear

view of both the

subject and the

background. You will

also need a lens with

a range of focal

lengths – such as

your good old

standard zoom.

9 | Changing viewpoint & focal length

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to your subject for them to

t a ke up a rou nd t h ree -

quarters of the height of the frame.

Next, focus, and take a shot. Now set

your lens around halfway through the

zoom range (such as 35mm on an 18-

55m m len s), a nd move away f rom t he

subject, until they again take up around

three-quarters of the frame, and take

another shot. Finally set the longest focal

length on your lens, and again move back

until they are the same height in the frame

as in the previous images.

When you review the images from this

exercise, the main thing that you’ll notice

is how the relationship between the subject

and the background changes when you

move. The closer you are to the subject,

using a wide-angle lens, the smaller any

objects in the background will appear.

Conversely, shooting from further away

with a longer focal length lens makes the

background appear closer to the subject.

In all of our example images on the right,

our model is exactly the same size in the

frame, but the perspective, and therefore

how much of the background landscape

i s v i sible i n f ra me, i s completely di f ferent.

The green arrows are pointing to the same

mountain peaks in the background in each

case, but they take up an increasing area

of t he f ra me a s we move away f rom ou r

subject and increase the focal length

This does take a bit of getting your head

round, but just so you can picture what’s

going on, in the top image our model is

really close to the camera and lens, but

were shooting at a very wide angle to

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image, the model is much further away,

but we’ve zoomed right in.

TAKE IT FURTHER

15

mins

http://www.digitalcameraworld.com March 2016 33

FEATURE