Can you get telephoto portrait compression from 1 meter away with a wide field of view?
Asked 9/12/2013
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I like the flattering, "compressed" look of portraits made with 85–135mm lenses, but those focal lengths usually require standing farther back because of their narrower angle of view. Is there any lens that would let me stay about 1 meter from the subject while keeping a wider field of view, yet still produce the same flattened facial perspective as an 85mm or 135mm lens? For example, can a lens give something like a 40mm field of view with 85mm-style portrait compression?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
12y ago
2 Answers
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You are misunderstanding the compression. The face appears flat because you are observing it from a distance and thus the angles of it ARE flat. If you move in closer, you are viewing it more from the side/off-axis and you get more depth. The focal length is simply used to crop the image for you.
You could take a portrait with an 135mm lens at 3 meters or you could take a photo with a 14mm lens and crop it down to the same field of view and the flattening would be the same. It would have an impact on other aspects of the photo, but not the angle at which the face is being seen or the compression you describe.
Similarly, the field of view of the lens is a direct result of the focal length of the lens and the size of the image circle it projects on to the sensor. You could theoretically make a lens that would project more information for that focal length (through a bigger image circle), but would then need a different size sensor to capture the expanded image circle. This would be the same as having a <1 crop factor.
Originally by user11392. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user11392
12y ago
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No. The "compression" or flattering facial perspective in portraits is caused by camera-to-subject distance, not by focal length itself.
An 85–135mm lens looks flatter because you usually stand farther away to frame the subject. From that greater distance, features like the nose and ears are at more similar distances from the camera, so the face appears less exaggerated. If you move in to 1 meter, perspective changes and facial features will look more prominent regardless of lens choice.
Focal length only changes angle of view and magnification for a given sensor size. A longer lens narrows the view; a wider lens broadens it. It does not create telephoto perspective by itself.
So you cannot have a lens with a wide field of view and, at the same shooting distance, also get the perspective of a longer lens shot from farther back. If you shot from farther away with a wide lens and cropped heavily, the perspective would match the telephoto shot, but from 1 meter away it will not.
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