----- Original Message -----
From: <asharpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students"
<photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 1:35 AM
Subject: Re: June 1, 2013 Reviews
Not to be argumentative or anything (on *this* list? never happens), but
if the aspect ratios were created from psychological studies, then why the
success of the 6x6 format? Was that also done because of a psychological
study, or was it done to thumb their noses at the psychological studies?
I just don't believe that the formats are such as they are because of
psychological studies. In fact, the 4:3 standard was done to mimic the
human eye angle of vision:
"A 4:3 ratio mimics human eyesight visual angle of 155°h x 120°v, that is
4:3.075, almost exactly the same." --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)
But 35mm and DSLRs are 3:2, and of course 6x6 is 1:1.
That page is an interesting read, by the way.
However, to the original point of cropping versus not cropping: stating
that cropping to a different composition cannot help a photograph taken
with a "worse" composition is poppycock and balderdash. It is just a tool,
certainly, but quite a useful too.
human eyes are funny and I find it hard to accept the 'normal lens = eye
view' story given human:
most have a 185 degree field of view horizontally.
most have a 15 degree field of attention - that's when we position
ourselves such that the object of our attention feels comfortable (we stand
a distance from a person such that the face fits with this angle)
most have merely 1/60th of degree of critical focus. hold a match in front
of you and look at the top of the match head, now the bottom - you can't
focus on both at once!
when you watch a TV or cinema sceen with a 40 degree angle of view, you not
only shift your eyes but you find your head rotating to accommodate your
eyes.
the 'normal' camera lens for any given format is however - easy to make ..
is the optimum balance between aperture speed and size (wides and teles need
to be bigger to give the same speeds and get bigger as they deviate further
from normal) .. and relatively distortion easy to make free of distortions.
I don't see it as any way resembling the human eye.
In fact our 180 field of view is more likely to produce a genuine fish eye
image which our brain then fixes up and makes normal.. no surprises really
since 'seeing' is more a memory/brain process than an eyeball thing.
As to cropping - I could take a nice picture of a subject, say a face with
the best lens (imo) for the job - say a 200mm lens - or I could shoot that
face with a 100mm, 50mm or even a 16mm. As long as I maintain the correct
perspective for the photo I can then crop any of these images and get an
identical image to that had I used the correct long lens in the first place.
The only difference is one is cropped by the lens, one is cropped in the
darkroom.
I could even go the other way and use a 50mm lens and from the nodal point,
take a mass of images in all directions then compile them together to make a
fish eye shot! you'd be surprised if you actually did this - it becomes
very clear afterwards when comparing this image to the original scene..
you'll soon see a 50mm lens is most certainly not anything related to our
vision
