From the course: Photo Gear Weekly

Long Lens Compression Myth

From the course: Photo Gear Weekly

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Long Lens Compression Myth

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- Invariably, when the subject of long-focal-length lenses comes up among photographers, I am very likely to hear about long-lens compression. But that is a myth, it is not the long lens that is compressing the scene, it is the photographer, actually as it turns out. So, first off, what is compression? Well, when we talk about compression, we're essentially making it appear as though distant subjects are a little bit closer to our near subjects. You're probably familiar, for example, with a wide-angle lens, distant subjects seem really far away, whereas the close subject still seems fairly close. With a long lens, thanks to it supposedly compressing the scene, those distant subjects, seem to be relatively close to the near subject. But it's not actually the lens that's doing all of that work. It's the photographer, specifically the position of your camera. When you move further away from the scene, you're essentially compressing the scene. You can think of this as, when I move a little bit further away from a distant subject, it doesn't seem to get that much further away. It doesn't seem to get that much smaller, whereas if I move just a little bit further away from a near subject, there's an immediate sense of that object getting smaller. That is the real culprit when it comes to that compression of the scene, well the myth anyway, it's not necessarily a bad thing of course, but it's not the lens, it's my position, so here for example, I've framed up this scene. I have some decorated concrete over on the left, and a rock off in the distance, and as I look through the viewfinder here, I can kind of evaluate the size of that distant rock relative to the size of the near subject here. And as I zoom in, if I pay careful attention to the scene, what I'll see is that all I'm doing is cropping the scene. I'm getting a narrower view of the overall scene. The relationship between foreground and background subjects does not change at all. If, on the other hand, I were to walk closer to that foreground subject, suddenly the distant subject would seem further away. So, why is it that we talk about the lens performing that work. Well of course if I move further away, in order to frame up my key subject in the same way, I need a longer focal length. And if I get closer to my subject in order to frame up the subject in the same way, I need a shorter focal length, or a wider angle lens. So yes, of course, I need to change the lens, but it's really my position that has caused that compression or the non-compression of the scene, you might say. So why does this matter at all? This seems like just semantics, right? Well, I think it is important because it serves as a valuable reminder that our position as the photographer, meaning the position of our camera, can have a tremendous impact on the overall photographic results we're getting. In this case, we're talking about compression of the scene in terms of distance to or from the subject, but the same could be said for getting higher or lower, moving to the right or left, small changes in position, can have a tremendous impact on the photo. So yes, lens compression, it exists, but it's really the photographer, the lens being the culprit, the cause of it, is really not the truth. It's just a myth in photography.

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