I use cameras practically and can’t quote the theory, but my understanding is as follows: > That has me wondering if there is some geometry that would give rea

I use cameras practically and can’t quote the theory, but my understanding is as follows: > That has me wondering if there is some geometry that would give realistic-looking pictures at all distances? I don’t think so. Compared with wider angle lenses as in phones, camera telephoto lenses produce the compression effect when the nearer and further objects are relatively close to each other compared with their common distance to the camera. If you had three people at 5, 100 and 105 metres away the 5m one would probably be out of focus and look significantly larger than the two at 100 and 105m. A zoom lens allows the degree of compression to be changed, but the image changes as you zoom. > Another issue that I am wondering about comes from the fact that telescopes (and, I am assuming, telescopic lenses for photography) have an objective lens to produce an image that is much closer, and then an eyepiece (or whatever the equivalent is called in photography) to view that image. Cameras don’t have an eyepiece lens in the same way that telescopes and microscopes do. In DSLRs, there is a mirror that routes the light to the camera viewfinder. When a picture is taken, the mirror moves out of the way and the light from the lens directly hits the sensor. In mirrorless digital cameras, the viewfinder image is created electronically rather than optically from the sensor. Most serious camera 'lenses' in fact have multiple elements. By way of example, a Nikon 20-200 lens has the following: 21 elements in 18 groups (including 6 ED lens elements, 2 aspherical elements, 1 fluorite element, 1 SR lens element, elements with Nano Crystal and ARNEO coats, and a fluorine-coated front lens element) [0] [0] https://store.nikon.co.uk/nikkor-lenses-nikkor-z-lenses/nikkor-z-70-200mm-f-2.8-vr-s/JMA709DA/details#specificationstab https://store.nikon.co.uk/nikkor-lenses-nikkor-z-lenses/nikk...