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As an amateur photographer the reporting at the beginning of the pandemic was journalistic poison. Anyone even vaguely interested in photography knows about len

• phreeza 6y ago
  On the contrary, I explicitly remember this effect making the rounds in many outlets in April: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-04-26-hvor-taet-er-folk-paa-hinanden-disse-billeder-er-taget-samtidig-men-viser-to https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-04-26-hvor-taet-er-folk-...
  • thinkingemote 6y ago
    It depends where you are I imagine. Some countries have cultures where any attempts to lessen the messaging in coronavirus news is on par with being morally wrong (or even dangerous). Other cultures are more critical or resistant. HN has a very diverse mix of users from a range of places.
    • XorNot 6y ago
      Perspective distortion misuse was neither of these though. It was simply dishonest journalism which distorted the messaging everywhere: are people following lockdowns and distancing or not? How does this relate to case numbers? Who could know because the pictures being put out there meant nothing.
      • thinkingemote 6y ago
        Yes we agree with each other.
      • gabriel34 6y ago
        This may, in fact, backfire in a couple of ways: 1. It may reduce societal pressure to isolate by making it seem only a minority of people are actually doing it (much like the broken windows theory) 2. It fuels distrust in media outlets. Deservingly so, even if machiavellianly this choice seems to serve the greater good.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
      • ghaff 6y ago
        "Misuse" is something of a judgment call though. Pretty much any photo makes choices of perspective, framing, etc. There are certainly cases of clear distortion but, especially in the context of distancing, arbitrary photos--even with "'normal"-ish focal lengths can tell very different stories depending upon where the camera is pointed.
        • t-writescode 6y ago
          If you're standing 100 feet away to use a movie-magic trick to make two objects seem next to each other when they're very much not, you're (edit: probably) being dishonest. edit: when that standing next to each other is attempting to introduce a narrative that people are doing something contrary to what they're actually doing
  • ornornor 6y ago
    I’m not particularly into photography so I would probably have never heard of that effect if it were not for HN. That’s why I keep coming back here, I always find something interesting!
    • mcguire 6y ago
      A 300mm telephoto lens gives a narrower field of view than the standard eyeball, making objects in the field of view seem packed closer together. A 24mm wide-angle lens gives a wider field of view, making objects in the field of view seem farther apart. ("Objects in mirror are closer than they appear"? Yeah, same thing.) Both can be used for artistic effects as well as being dishonest. (I really like a 150-200mm lens for portraits; for one thing not having the camera and photographer nearby makes people look more natural.) A good match for the eye is a 50mm "standard" lens. (All lens sizes are for 35mm cameras; I don't remember what the correction factor is for my DSLR's CCD.)
      • girvo 6y ago
        1.5x if it’s an APS-C sensor, 2x if it’s a micro 4/3rds, and 1x if it’s full frame (this is most likely if you’re shooting Nikon or Canon, Fujifilm mirror-less are APS-C, Panasonic et al are m4/3)
      • pottertheotter 6y ago
        How is it that people's heads look the same size when they can be so far apart? I guess I need to learn more about all this.
        • Pinus 6y ago
          The relative sizes depend on the relative distance from the camera. Say you have two persons, one standing one meter in front of the other, and the photographer standing one meter in front of the frontmost person, shooting with a wide-angle lens so that the nearest person fills the frame. The far person is then twice as far away as the near person (2m vs. 1m), and will appear half the size of the near person (assuming they're the same size in reality!). The photographer then moves 50 meters away, and shoots with a (really!) long telephoto lens, so that the nearest person still fills the frame. The near person is now 50 meters away and the far person is 51 meters away, and will appear 50/51 of the near persons's size. (This would still happen if the photographer kept the wide-angle lens, but then a lot more of the surroundings would have been included in the frame, making it obvious that the persons were far away. Whether tele/wide-angle "affects perspective" is a favourite topic of endless debate on photo-related Internet forums. The answer hinges on which parameters you maintain constant, and which ones you allow to vary.)
  • noneeeed 6y ago
    I'm not sure this was contrary to what the parent comment says. Back in April the newspapers and other media were regularly using photographs that made crowds and beaches look much more densly packed than they were. This was being pointed out by articles like the one you linked to, but that doesn't negate original offense. Far fewer people were reading articles like this than were seing toxic scare-mongering photos on the front pages of major national newspapers.
  • FalconSensei 6y ago
    This article has way better examples than OP. Thanks for sharing!
  • handedness 6y ago
    The poisonous journalistic atmosphere which the GP referenced was precisely the impetus behind that much-needed exercise.
    • trhway 6y ago
      Damaging the trust in media and government is a classic "penny smart, pound foolish", and the next time the boy cries wolf things may go differently.
      • MichaelZuo 6y ago
        The media industry seems to be trapped in an enormous sub optimal Nash equilibrium.
        • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
          Quarterly earnings are built on eyeball-hours so everyone is optimizing for short term maximization of eyeball hours.
• TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Anyone even vaguely interested in photography knows about lens compression. And here I thought lens compression doesn't exist: https://fstoppers.com/originals/lens-compression-doesnt-exist-147615 https://fstoppers.com/originals/lens-compression-doesnt-exis...
  • reedf1 6y ago
    Yes, lens compression is how people colloquially know a variety of perspective distortion (foreshortening). I have a background in optics and there is quite a bit of lingo discontinuity.
    • VBprogrammer 6y ago
      I always find the running scene in The Graduate a great illustration of this effect. He is running flat out what feels like an age and yet barely seems to get any closer to the camera. The last 30 seconds of this clip https://youtu.be/yRBNA27N0ts https://youtu.be/yRBNA27N0ts
      • rootusrootus 6y ago
        Another really good example are amateur videos taken of airliners landing in crosswinds. Usually taken head-on, they are necessarily taken from a very long distance, so it looks like the plane just hovers as it gently drops to the ground.
        • schoen 6y ago
          I remember someone mentioning this example: https://vimeo.com/152514220 https://vimeo.com/152514220 In this scene (if I remember correctly) the man on the right is coolly allowing the man on the left to believe that he's being threatened with being sent (by the approaching airplane) to another country where he would suffer a terrible fate. The scene is meant to make it look like the airplane pilot has deliberately executed an impressive landing right next to the men, but apparently in real life it was quite far away (like a runway's length or so).
• re 6y ago
  > journalistic poison ... intentionally composed to compress the crowds The article addresses and explores this viewpoint and attempts to add nuance. > If you search for "compression effect corona" in Japanese on the internet, you'll discover a flood of criticism of newspaper and television images related to the pandemic, including allegations of "creating crowding," "lies," and "faked shots." [...] > The photos were lambasted as "exaggerating" the crowding, "manipulative," and "stoking public anxiety." However, there is no proof that the photographer was deliberately seeking to create a distorted impression of the scene. > Shooting crowds with a telephoto lens is standard procedure among photojournalists. I had never questioned the practice, because I thought it was intended to express crowdedness. And as far as I am aware, there had never been criticism of the technique before the pandemic. [...] > I don't think us news photographers can keep using techniques we'd always taken for granted without talking about why we use them. We are in a time when we must try to shoot our subjects from multiple angles, and explain the effects lens compression and exaggerated perspective can have.
  • goblin89 6y ago
    Using telephoto lenses and angles that preclude the audience from understanding distances between people in a crowd without knowing the specifications of photography equipment is absolutely fine for artistic effect, but in documentary shots IMO it treads the line next to bad (regardless of the times) journalism, especially if another composition that allows the viewer to approximate crowd density objectively is possible.
    • goblin89 6y ago
      To clarify, the blame does not lie entirely with the photojournalist. They may choose to get a shot using a telephoto lens to capture, say, which face expressions dominate the crowd (which may be unfeasible with a wide lens). Now, if this is the only picture the photographer has taken, then both the editor (who had not had a lot of options, though still could go without a photo entirely) and the photographer are guilty of contributing unprofessional journalism. On the other hand, if the editor chose to use only the tele shot while having other angles available, then the editor is culpable (the photographer, only in so much as they do not raise a concern and choose to continue to work with that editor).
• chasd00 6y ago
  that was incredibly depressing to me. I think the manipulating of perspective when trying to make the fish you caught look bigger is harmless enough but manipulating perspective to push a political agenda is harmful and depressing. Any photo i see on a news outlet i now have to tease out what manipulations may exist.
• deleted 6y ago
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• brudgers 6y ago
  Theory aside, in a pandemic, the longer lens is more conducive to social distancing. Its use may be simply a matter of sound hygiene and not editorial stance. For a journalist, a long focal length may be the most practical way to get a shot. Nick Ut carries a DSLR with a 60-600mm in addition to his Leica these days.
  • core-questions 6y ago
    >the longer lens is more conducive to social distancing Why, because you're liable to hit someone with it when you swing around if they don't give you some space?
    • ISL 6y ago
      Some of the most-impactful photojournalism images are made with focal lengths between 24 and 50 mm. To fill the frame with your subject requires being well within their personal space. 70 mm and higher really allows a lot of distance. The pandemic has definitely changed things, at least temporarily.
• m463 6y ago
  I think that's what photographers do. They pull out the formula menu. Most movies about city things show that shot - the people walking walking walking - moving up and down and never getting closer or further away. And movies in the country always have an aerial shot over the countryside showing trees and roads below, finally zooming in on the car driving.