Understanding lens perspective

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Found an article that explains perspective better than I've seen anywhere:

http://www.photocamel.com/index.php/topic,2197.0.html

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:42:24 GMT, Jay <jimbo@aol.com> wrote:

>Found an article that explains perspective better than I've seen anywhere:
>
>http://www.photocamel.com/index.php/topic,2197.0.html


what's old is new again. I remember learning this about 30 years ago,
either from Pop. Photo or Modern Photo mag. Or maybe both.

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

In article <rgrWe.1242$Jm.435@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>,
Bryan Olson <fakeaddress@nowhere.org> wrote:
>Jay wrote:
> > Found an article that explains perspective better than I've seen
>anywhere:
> >
> > http://www.photocamel.com/index.php/topic,2197.0.html
>
>The best I've seen remains chapter one, "Perspective", of Rudolf
>Kingslake's /Optics in Photography/. One point he makes is that
>a photograph has a "center of perspective". Correct perspective
>requires viewing the photograph from this point,

I've seen this referred to as the "station point", but not the "centre of
perspective" before.

>The distortion we observe in wide-angle photographs is due to
>viewing them from well behind their center of perspective. The
>distance-compression of long-focus lenses, we perceive because
>we view the photographs from closer in.

Indeed. Perhaps a good way to think about it is to imagine the photograph is
stuck on a pane of glass in front of the original scene. The station point
is where you'd have to stand in order to make the edges of the photo line up
with the objects in the real scene that you can see through the glass.