Loading...Images from the Id – What you see is not what you get. Part 1 the Pinhole Camera
Who ever was the first person to utter the phrase “What you see is what you get” started one of the biggest lies to ever perpetuate itself through civilization. May be in the long run it does serve a purpose in taking the responsibility for careful mental decisions from the producer to the consumer but in the real world do you get what you see? We could debate issues as truth in lending and advertising but that will always be something everyone will talk about but no one will do anything about.
On the other hand in a photograph there is no debate about whether you get what you see or not. What you see is much more complicated than simply what is there in front of you. Seeing is complicated by the addition of perception or what your brain sees. The phrase “It’s in the eye of the beholder” could not be more true. Ten photographers take photographs of the same thing and will usually get 10 differently perceived images. We have different brains so we perceive differently. I have always wondered. Is the color I see as red is the same as that which you see or is it your purple?
The human eye is a wonder. It can see very large variations in contrast (the differences in brightness of areas of an image). It can, subconsciously, continually focus for a perception of infinite depth of field (until we get older and lose true close focusing). If you will remember the Depth of Field is the portion of a scene which is in focus nearer and farther from the lens. Two eye working together give us three-dimensional vision and depth perception. Although there are some newly invented cameras which attempt to match the eye in these respects, generally the camera fails to get close to the eye’s ability.
When I took my first formal photography course in college, the first project was to construct a pinhole camera (Yes this was a long time ago). This had several lessons: First – A pinhole is a lens with resolution limited only by the sizes of the pinhole, smaller is better and the diffraction of the light through the pinhole, bigger is better. As most things in life it’s a balance and you try to get the smallest hole possible. Second – The pinhole has infinite depth of field. Third – the focal length could be easily changed for telephoto or wide angle, introducing the Physics concept of the Inverse Square Law for light intensity. The usual exposure was about 10 sec. or more but the results were interesting and surprising.
Next step let’s see if we can do it with digital
This week’s Photo
“Cannon” Castillo de Marcos St. Augustine Florida, ISO 100; 1/45 shutter speed; f 19; 0 EV; 70/105 mm, Aperture priority; spot metered. Cropped for composition; processed and sharpened in Lightroom 5.3. A small aperture was used to get the increase in depth of field
