The perceptual basis of common photographic practice.
Photographers, cinematographers, and computer-graphics engineers use certain techniques to create striking pictorial effects. By using lenses of different focal lengths, they can make a scene look compressed or expanded in depth, make a familiar object look natural or distorted, or make a person look smarter, more attractive, or more neurotic. We asked why pictures taken with a certain focal length look natural, while those taken with other focal lengths look distorted. We found that people's preferred viewing distance when looking at pictures leads them to view long-focal-length pictures from too near and short-focal-length pictures from too far. Perceptual distortions occur because people do not take their incorrect viewing distances into account. By following the rule of thumb of using a 50-mm lens, photographers greatly increase the odds of a viewer looking at a photograph from the correct distance, where the percept will be undistorted. Our theory leads to new guidelines for creating pictorial effects that are more effective than conventional guidelines.
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. emilycooper@berkeley.edu
Emily A
EA
Cooper
Elise A
EA
Piazza
Martin S
MS
Banks
D003867:Depth Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004215:Distance Perception / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D010781:Photography; D055815:Young Adult