Which lens flatten an image most

One thing thing you may notice is that the moon seems higher in the sky in the longer focal length images see the entire series below. That is partly because the ground I was standing on was not completely flat. That huge drop does not have to do with the focal length of the lenses. The moon in the longer focal length images seems much more out of focus than the standard and wide angle photos.

That is partly due to the focal lengths of the lenses. As you use longer focal lengths, it is harder to keep both the subject and the background both in focus. If you are trying to keep both the subject and the background in sharp focus you will need to use a smaller aperture.

In the first two images the moon is also partially blurred from the atmosphere as it was just rising above the horizon. You can see how striking the difference is in the appearance of the moon from mm to 24mm. So why would you want to compress or flatten an image? The longer focal lengths really accentuate the moon making it much larger in frame and appears to flatten the image making the moon seem very close to Q.

That leads to a much more dramatic image. You could use this technique in your portraits to highlight parts of the background such as mountains, the moon, or any other object that may be far off in the distance. In contrast, you can use wider lenses to accentuate your close-up subject and the foreground. These are just a few examples of how you can use telephoto lens compression in your photography. I often photograph vast panoramic landscapes and some of my favorites have been taken with longer lenses at mm or longer.

I find that by using a flat, low contrast, low saturation picture style, when I process the RAW file I can bring out better detail and contrast, and avoid clipping in the highlights and shadows. A flat or neutral picture style will give you an image with the least contrast, maintaining better highlight and shadow detail.

This allows you to bring out those details in processing. The histogram on your camera, and later in Photoshop or Lightroom, allows you to see where your highlight and shadow tones fall, to avoid clipping. Once I saw this technique, I decided to change my picture style on my camera to Neutral for Canon cameras or Flat on newer Nikons. The reason is that the histogram shown on the back of the camera, as well as the image preview, reflect the selected picture style.

The result is that if the picture style selected is a more contrasty one, such as Landscape, the histogram will reflect that, and may indicate clipping of highlights or shadows, especially in a contrasty scene. This histogram shows clipped highlights, meaning detail is lost in the brightest areas of the image.

On my Nikon D, I use the Flat picture control, because it is the best choice for capturing the full range of tones in the scene, and those tones are reflected on the histogram on the back of the camera when I review the shots. This is important because I need an accurate indication of where the highlights and shadows in a scene fall in my histogram.

Nikon picture control — if you do not have Flat, choose Neutral or Faithful. The histogram on your camera is a graphed indication of where the pixels in your image fall in relation to highlights and shadows. The left edge represents blacks, the mid-left represents shadows, the middle is midtones, the mid-right is highlights, and the far right is whites. While not all cameras have a Flat picture control or style, most have a Neutral or Faithful picture style or control, that works similarly.

Also, most cameras give you the ability to edit the picture styles, so you can turn down the contrast if you like, ensuring that you capture more highlight and shadow detail, and reducing the chances of clipping highlights or shadows.

The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Do I need a telephoto lens to make objects in the distance appear closer? Asked 3 years, 7 months ago. Active 3 years, 7 months ago. Viewed 4k times. Improve this question. Belle Belle 1, 2 2 gold badges 7 7 silver badges 19 19 bronze badges. Related: photo. This has all been well covered here before.

MichaelClark I did notice that, but I felt like the information is spread over so many different questions and all of them seem to only reference a different aspect of it. I wanted to understand why it works that way.

It's pretty much all covered in one place by at least at least two different answers to What is the difference between perspective distortion and barrel or pincushion distortion? It's more succinctly covered at What is background compression?

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Further reading: I suggest Elizabeth Gray's article about lens compression on Photographylife. Improve this answer. Consider what we refer to as telephoto compression : Let's assume you are 10 feet away from your friend Joe and take his picture in portrait orientation with a 50mm lens. Michael C Michael C k 9 9 gold badges silver badges bronze badges.

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