Why do people think....

Started May 14, 2012 | Discussions thread
Veteran MemberPosts: 3,416
In reply to LensBeginner, May 17, 2012

LensBeginner wrote:

This forum seems (at least lately) to be a hive for people who refuse to understand on purpose what other people are saying and try to be the more finicky

Ain't that the truth!

I think there's also a psychological reason.

When you change lens you alter your pov, and have the impression that you can change the world around you (in fact, you simply change the way you see it).

That's a good point. I think Alain Briot stated it well in one of his articles on aesthetics and photography:

"Human beings always see the same angular distance, the same field of view. While we can focus our attention to a narrow section of our field of view, this field of view remains fixed. When looking at the world through a camera we can vary the field of view by changing the lens. How much a camera sees depends on the focal length of the lens that is attached to it. . . Hence a camera, and a set of wide angle, normal and telephoto lenses (or zoom lenses), allows us to expand what our eyes can see beyond our human limits. Through the use of lenses we can see wider than we normally can or we can see further than we normally can. Our field of view becomes adjustable. Our ability to see is both enhanced and expanded. A new field of endeavor opens itself to us: showing the world in ways human eyes alone cannot see it."

My preference is to record scenes in a way that helps me remember what it looked like when I was there, so I'm happy to take pictures with just a normal focal length lens almost all the time. Other people with other purposes/objectives will need other tools.

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