This series shows the impacts of focal length on a portrait.  It cycles from wide to telephoto and then shows 24mm versus 200mm to stress the point.  At wide focal lengths features and her body get exaggerated and distorted – especially nearer the edges of the frame.

You can clearly see DeAnna’s arms distorted at the wide end and the body shape becomes much more natural as we get above 80mm.  She looks especially nice at 200mm!

Why does this happen?  Remember that as we increase the focal length we increase magnification so to keep her the same size in the frame I must back up.   This makes her body and face straighter to the camera – the angle differences become very small.  Come to the class and I will explain!

This next series was taken with a 14mm lens.  I think I was about 8 inches from DeAnna’s face for these pictures!  In this series you can see what happens as I move the camera.  When she is in the center of the frame the distortion is bad but not that bad.  But as she moves to the edges the warping is almost too much to stand!