Project 10: focal lengths and different viewpoints

Take a photograph with a subject filling tightly in the frame using a telephoto lens. Then switch to a wide angle lens and move forward until the same subject fills tightly in the frame and take another shot. Compare the results and write down the differences between the two.

***

1. Focal length 120 mm

2. Focal length: 50 mm

3. Focal length: 24 mm

I took three photographs of two telephone boxes with different focal length lenses; telephoto (120 mm), standard (50 mm) and wide angle (24 mm), so that the nearer telephone box becomes roughly the same size in the frame in each photograph.

There are two obvious differences between the photographs.

- The size of the other telephone box

- The distortion of the nearer telephone box

The size of the other telephone box becomes smaller as the focal length becomes shorter. In other words, the distance between the two telephone boxes looks closer in the photograph 1 and the distance looks exaggeratedly longer in the photograph 3. The distance in the photograph 2 looks somewhere between the telephoto and wide angle.

In the photograph 3, the nearer telephone box looks very distorted whereas in the photograph 1 the telephone box does not look distorted. I think this is mainly because of the nature of the wide angle lens and also because of the actual distance between the lens and the telephone box. In the photograph 3, the distance between the lens and the telephone box is much closer than that in the photograph 1, which produces a completely different perspective.