American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 98

◗

Practical Optics: Testing Different Sensor Sizes

The camera position is changed in order to maintain Marion's framing with fixed focal lengths. Left: A shoulder shot of Marion with a 90mm is
matched for different formats by moving the camera; the field of view at Marion's position is constant, but, as the camera gets farther away, Kevin
and the painting in the background increase in size and therefore appear to get closer to Marion. Middle: A medium shot of Marion and Kevin with a
50mm also shows background magnification and spatial compression. Right: A closer shot of Marion with a 24mm is also matched for the three sensor
sizes by moving the camera; note how Marion's face appears to change with different camera distances.

11. Magnification
and Compression
It's striking to see Kevin and the
background painting increase in size with
all three focal lengths as the camera gets
farther away, while Marion stays the same
in the foreground field of view.
Magnification is simply a matter of
occupying more space in the frame.
Longer focal lengths, like the 90mm, will
have narrower angles of view than wider
lenses, and will therefore decrease the
fields of view and yield higher magnification.
Compression is linked to magnification, because objects appear closer as
they increase in size. When Kevin occupies almost the same width in the frame as
Marion, he appears to be very close to her.
So the narrow angle of view of the 90mm
will appear to compress the distance
between Marion and Kevin more than the
wider angle of view of the 50mm.
98

April 2016

It's important to note that magnification and compression are created by
camera distance for all three focal
lengths, even though these artifacts are
accentuated by the narrower angle of
view of the 90mm.
12. The 24mm Personality
In order to emphasize the
"personality" of the 24mm lens, we
started on the 36x20 large format just
15" away from Marion. As we move to
5' with this wide-angle lens, the shape
and look of Marion's face is transformed. This highlights how each focal
length has its own way of rendering a
face, and how its depiction of space and
its portraiture can be radical at short
distances.

13. Conclusions
Briefly, our conclusions from
these tests are:
A. At the same distance, larger formats
imply longer lenses and therefore less
depth of field.
B. At the same distance, large and small
formats will offer similar compositions if
you adjust focal length.
C. Changing camera distance while
matching the foreground field of view
will change the image perspective, and
in particular background magnification
and the apparent depth of the space in
the frame.
D. Therefore, the camera distance to
subject is key to the perspective of the
image.

American Cinematographer



American Cinematographer - April 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2016

Contents
American Cinematographer - April 2016 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - April 2016 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 1
American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 2
American Cinematographer - April 2016 - Contents
American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 4
American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 5
American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 6
American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 7
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American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 64a
American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 64b
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