The brief of the his project was to take 3 -10 photographs with varying focal lengths to appreciate the impact of focal length on field of view. The first task was a to find a view that is open but with some details in the distance, in the middle of the view.
I found this view in Hexhamshire, near to the racecourse, which gives a panoramic view of the shire, but also with the detail of Hexham town in the distance, including the iconic Abbey. It is taken pointing North.
The images were taken shortly before sundown, mainly because I was searching for a good spot to go and photograph the fireworks later that night. This also prevented details being lost due to high contrast in the scene, so that the true impact of different focal length on the details caught could be reviewed. The shots are shown here in decreasing order of focal length.
Starting firstly with the 18mm widest angle shot, this captured the scale of the panoramic view visible from my viewpoint. The entire length of the town, from East to West, is captured, as well as the fields and hills in the distance up to the horizon. The sky occupies almost half the image. The texture of the field in the foreground is given much weight in the image. However, whilst the panoramic view is captured, the details in the view are lost because they occupy such a proportionately small component of the image. Even zooming into the Abbey post production in this image to view the details is not possible, because resolution is lost at that level of zoom. There is little interest in this image, mainly due to the lost detail in the main subject (Hexham town) but also the composition and positioning of the horizon make it static and uninteresting. A dramatic sky may have added some interest, but this was not to be the case today.
The 34mm shot was a slight improvement. It still captured most of the width of the town, although it was a tighter fit so there was no detail captured beyond the town east or west. The field in the foreground was still prominant, but carried a lot less weight overall (about one third of the image). The trees at the bottom of the field took on more form, which was more pleasing. Similarly the sky only occupied around 1/3 of the image. The remainder of the image was the view of Hexham town and the hills beyond. As it occupied a much larger component of the image than in the 18mm shot, more details were visible. The clock tower of Hexham Abbey could just be made out, but also the slope of the hill up to the horizon was more prominent, including the patterns of the fields. Although this is a definate improvement on the 18mm shot, with the 3 components (foreground detail, vista, sky) making up approx 1/3 each, I found this image unsatisfying as I was straining my eyes to try and make out details in the town. I have come to the conclusion that this particular view is just too busy to suit a wide angle, distant viewpoint.
My next image was at 55mm, which is the limit of my kit lens. This is approximately the standard focal length of my camera, and the resultant image was very close to how I saw the scene. The detail on the hills is much clearer and seems much closer than the previous images, so this is much improved on the 18mm and 34mm. The Abbey is much clearer too, with less requirement to strain your eyes to try and make it the detail. Although the image is quite dull, reflecting the weather (light rain), this is quite a pleasing image, mainly because the hills in the distance are given such prominence.
I then switched lens to my 70-300mm zoom and took 3 shots; one at 77mm, one at 135mm and one at 300mm.
The image at 77mm is very similar to the 55mm image. There is more zoom so the town and hills appear larger, and the foreground field and sky are becoming peripheral components to the image as a whole. Depth is starting to become compressed, with the trees at the bottom of the field appearing much closer to the Abbey even though they are some distance apart.
At 135mm, the sky is no longer part of the image, and linear perspective is further compressed as the nearby trees, town and distant hills now appear close together. Loss of sky accentuates this effect. This is still quite a busy image, because the compression of the rooftops etc distract from the main point of interest in the town, i.e. the Abbey.
At 300mm, the Abbey assumes prominence and is the central point of interest in the image. Linear persepctive is lost, as the nearby trees appear to be just in front of the Abbey, when in fact they are at least 1mile apart. Similarly the background hills appear just behind the Abbey when in reality there is an industrial estate and the river Tyne in between. Due to the surrounding rooftops, including the industrial estate, I believe that the Abbey would be displayed better up close as the main subject of an image. Therefore my favourite image from this set is the one at 77mm whereby there is still a sense of depth of the view, but detail is also captured.
My final part of the project was to crop & magify the 55mm image to approximate to the view in the 300mm image. Although there was some resolution lost, it was evident that the 2 were the same. This is shown at the bottom of the images.
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