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Telephoto means long focal length. (Long not “high”). It’s not true that only a handful of pixels would be left with a modern sensor. The point is that perspe

by w0mbat 6y ago

Telephoto means long focal length. (Long not “high”). It’s not true that only a handful of pixels would be left with a modern sensor. The point is that perspective is a result of distance from the subject or subjects. Long lenses make it convenient to work from further away without having to crop later, but the key thing is distance. If you shoot portraits from too close they will look bad regardless of lens and later cropping. If you shoot a crowd from close up, that intimacy is baked into the pictures.

franga2000 6y ago
No, it doesn't. Telephoto is a specific category of long-focal lenses, where the focal length is longer than the lens itself - that is achieved using a special lens element that isn't present in regular long lenses. (as for the "high focal length", I guess it's just a language quirk as it makes perfect sense in my native language) Looking at the math, cropping a picture taken with a 28mm lens to the equivalent of 300mm is a crop factor of 0.093. Using the highest-res camera I've used (a Sony A7R IV) at 61MP, this results in a photo of around 900x600 pixels - not something you'd ever see published and taking into account the significant amount of noise that is unavoidable at that pixel density, the photo would be utterly unusable even at that resolution. So sure, it's a distance effect, but since no sane person would do that kind of crop and if they did, it would be painfully obvious or at least highly suspicious-looking to most people (also keep in mind the DoF!), it's pretty safe to conclude that this effect will be significant only with telephoto lenses.
- w0mbat 6y ago
  Any long lens you buy is going to use the telephoto design, it's a given. A fairly mild crop to say make a 85mm simulate a 105mm is almost undetectable in terms of quality, and the difference that can make to the look of a portrait because you took a few steps further back and then cropped to get the same framing as a 105mm, is very noticeable.
  - franga2000 6y ago
    You need much more than a 20mm difference to make social-distancing people look like they're basically hugging, which is what the article is about. Either way, none of this matters anyways because the whole point of the article is the compression effect, not where it comes from and in their case, it came from a telephoto lens, not a cropped wide-angle, so the terminology is entirely fine.

by w0mbat 6y ago

franga2000 6y ago

No, it doesn't. Telephoto is a specific category of long-focal lenses, where the focal length is longer than the lens itself - that is achieved using a special lens element that isn't present in regular long lenses. (as for the "high focal length", I guess it's just a language quirk as it makes perfect sense in my native language) Looking at the math, cropping a picture taken with a 28mm lens to the equivalent of 300mm is a crop factor of 0.093. Using the highest-res camera I've used (a Sony A7R IV) at 61MP, this results in a photo of around 900x600 pixels - not something you'd ever see published and taking into account the significant amount of noise that is unavoidable at that pixel density, the photo would be utterly unusable even at that resolution. So sure, it's a distance effect, but since no sane person would do that kind of crop and if they did, it would be painfully obvious or at least highly suspicious-looking to most people (also keep in mind the DoF!), it's pretty safe to conclude that this effect will be significant only with telephoto lenses.

w0mbat 6y ago
Any long lens you buy is going to use the telephoto design, it's a given. A fairly mild crop to say make a 85mm simulate a 105mm is almost undetectable in terms of quality, and the difference that can make to the look of a portrait because you took a few steps further back and then cropped to get the same framing as a 105mm, is very noticeable.
- franga2000 6y ago
  You need much more than a 20mm difference to make social-distancing people look like they're basically hugging, which is what the article is about. Either way, none of this matters anyways because the whole point of the article is the compression effect, not where it comes from and in their case, it came from a telephoto lens, not a cropped wide-angle, so the terminology is entirely fine.