[Lunatique]

I'm a little stuck on this piece--there's a bit of a perspective/framing problem:





I like the first version's closer framing where you see less of the far away background, but as you can see, it is technically incorrect according to the vanishing line and the correct size of the red figure.

The second version is technically accurate, but I don't like the fact you see too much of the far away background (sky, tall buildings..etc).

Is there a solution to this?

[B0b]

give the shops some flats above them?

or make the pavement shorter before the t junction?

[spyroteknik]

i'm not sure if this'll be of any help, but, fresh eye



just altered the pov slightly, cropped the top, added more on bottom, gave it more of a tunnelling feeling, moved the couple to the right a bit to open the view up and messed with the lineweights just to alter the perception of depth more aligned with how the values will probably look, think the only problem i could see that was worthy of note was the buildings above the mobsters, the strong horizontal, if you could break that up, make it slip back into the surroundings it'd bring the focus right up to the foreground characters

as i said, it's just a fresh perspective on it, pinch of salt added

[Lunatique]

Actually, the problem I have is that I like how much closer the background is to the subjects in the first version, but according to correct perspective, they wouldn't be that close at all, and would be more like the 2nd version. But, I don't like how far away the background is in the second verson--it opens up the enviroment too much, and looses the tension of the original.

[jfrancis]

IMHO, the vanishing point is correct for a low, hip-high, level camera. That's why the figures' hips line up along the horizon.

The buildings look as if depicted by a fairly wide lens.

The figures look as if depicted by a fairly long lens, from pretty far away, so as to have a more flattened, telephoto effect. That's why the plane on the underside of everyone's jaw isn't a major feature.

I think you can flatten the background by drawing all of the horizontal lines in the background more "stacked up" closer together, and less far down the vanishing lines.

[Affected]

What if you moved the characters further down the street and "zoomed in" to compensate?

[jfrancis]

It's the same number of "boxes" from the feet of the figures
to the end of the hall regardless of which lens and camera position
I use, but the look changes quite a bit . . .







. . . and the "relative squeeze" from box to box changes quite a bit
as the camera lens and position vary as well.

[atomicmonkey]

Hey Lunatique,

Technically your image is incorrect but that's because you put the horizon in the wrong spot. The peoples hips line up with the tires of the car in the background. That's one big car!

Seems to me like you wanna switch that horizon line if you want to keep the appeal of your first image. I agree the closer background works much better. Here's something I noticed though...

You sketched in what appears to be two people behind the car in the background... They look perfectly fine beside the car and those buildings, and the people in the front look fine as well. But that little red dwarf drawing just isn't going to work unless shes a monkey dancing for change!



I devloped the feet of those two people behind the car and lined up the tall men with the man in the back and woman with the gun with the woman in the back. Lines up great when the horizon is near shoulder height. I enlarged the red dwarf monkey and she lines up fine too! I'm not sure, my solution may not be perfect but it looks fine to me. I always say, if it looks good, who cares?

Seems to me like you had a great idea but got confused when you tried to make it follow the rules... by getting too technical you killed the original vision you had. Best way to go is to get your work down on the page the way you want it to be. Sometimes forget the horizon, a grid, vanishing points. Just make it look the way you want. Then, if you feel like it's believeable enough, leave it! If you want to tighten it up, solve the problems within your image, but don't kill that original appeal you saw when you wanted to make the image in the first place.

Eh, I'm getting way too meaningful with all of this, haha.

Anyway, I think this simple change makes you image work great. After that red figure is fixed, I saw a really nice composition within your picture. Nice work! I'd love to see it painted.

[Lunatique]

Wow, those are some damn helpful replies! Thanks a bunch!

It's strange how the different focal lengths only really change how much the tiles stretch into the vanishing point? I'd think the spread of the width would change too. The 80mm is definitely close to my original intent. In fact, I could even use a longer focal length.

I totally agree that sometimes aesthetics should be more important than accuracy. I've always believed in that, but for some reason, I really wanted to get the perspective right in this piece, since I thought if I painted it as is, people are bound to point out the perspective mistake and I'd never hear the end of it. LOL

I'll rework the background of the original version and see what I come up with.

[jfrancis]

Notice I'm not just changing the lens. I'm also moving the camera.

Changing the lens from a 20mm to an 80mm would only blow the figures up too large to see in frame. To reframe them, you have to back the camera away from them.





"The distant cube seems 'flatter' than the others because the relative size difference between the front cube face, 100 units away, and the rear cube face, 101 units away, is small. The front cube, by contrast, seems greatly distorted because the front face of the unit cube, at 1 unit away, is twice as close to the camera as is the rear face of the cube, at 2 units away.

Close objects display distortion by virtue of their closeness. People associate distortion with wide-angle lenses because such lenses are commonly used to pleasingly frame close objects. The wide angle lens is not the cause of the distortion.

Distant objects display flatness by virtue of their distance. People associate flatness with telephoto lenses because such lenses are commonly used to pleasingly frame distant objects. The telephoto lens is not the cause of the flatness."

I go into some detail at the bottom of this page:

http://www.digitalartform.com/lenses.htm



... Philip Greenspun says it well when he says:

"If film and lenses were perfect... you would need only one lens!
In a perfect world, I'd walk about with only my Canon 14 super-wide lens. I'd worry only about my camera position, secure in the knowledge that the 14mm lens was wide enough to capture my entire subject under 99% of conditions. Then if I wanted a picture for my Web site of just my friend in the middle of the frame, I'd crop down to just the center and use that. The result would be the same as if I'd used a 100mm portrait lens.

The reason this doesn't work is that lenses and film aren't perfect. If you throw away 98% of the area of a negative (and/or make a huge enlargement), you can expect to have some pretty crummy looking pixels. So if I'm sure at exposure time that I will want more magnification, it is best for me to carry some higher magnification lenses."

-- excerpt from http://www.photo.net/making-photographs/lens

[Lunatique]

Ah, no wonder. If you were moving the camera too, then that would make sense. I was wondering why the tiles only stretched towards the vanishing point.

Yeah, the life of a photographer would be much easier if we had one super lens that can do it all, but sadly, I have to lug around 4~5 lenses on a photography trip, not counting the tripod, accesories, and a bunch of other stuff. It's pure torture on your shoulders carrying all that crap. If someone could just design an ultimate lens that can do 10mm-600mm, has constant f-stop at f/1.2, compact sized and light weight (no bigger/heavier than a typical 24mm-70mm lens--or even a 70mm-200mm), sharp as a tack from one end to another, corner to center, excellent contrast/color, no distortion on wide end, no chromatic aberration, fast/silent auto-focus, weather-sealed..etc, then I'm sure that manufacturer will dominate the market in the most violent way. LOL

[mikewilson]

I think that part of your distance problem was that in the cleaned version you made the foreground building longer than it was before by increasing its convergance. Things like that happen to me all the time when I'm comping up an image. The trick I've found is to mess with the scale and the proportions of objects to get things working. So, if I want the background closser, I'd litterally move it closer to the camera by chopping off some of the foreground. I mean, there's really no reason why the foreground building and middle ground street can't move into camera about 20 or 30 feet.

[Lunatique]

Ok, this is my current remedy to the problem. I fudged with the scale of the sidewalk tiles, the building down the road..etc. They are not accurate according to the horizon and vanishing point, but they give me the framing that I want. In this case, aesthetics wins over accuracy.



I'll probably do something about the pole being right behind the guy in the middle. Maybe move him a bit to the right?

[Tomasis]

what nice sketch. but one thing bugs me very much that woman is holding the hand unnaturally . like as holding a small tree on the woman body. I would like to see more flexible movement as from a proffesional assault The shoulder could follow the movement also, therefore the lifeguard to right looks to hide the "boss" completely, is that your intention? to make the whole more exciting, one needs to put the guard body a little back but leave the hand in the same place. otherwise I could believe the guard was 2,20 cm tall as Ming, Nba player.