Forced Perspective (the long version)
Part 1 of 2:
I have been putting this off for quite a while because I just didn't want to think that hard. But the time has come to figure out how to realistically recreate photos of real-world architecture when taking pictures of micro-scale MOCs.
This is probably obvious to everyone but me, but I'm one of those people who has to actually do something to learn something...if that makes any sense.
The first photo I'm hoping to recreate is a picture I took of the US Capitol Building from 3rd Street, which defines the border between the National Mall and the Capitol Grounds.
Okay, so what does forced perspective have to do with all this? Well, the area a building takes up in a picture is dependent on many variables, but two of the most important are: 1) the size of the building and 2) the distance between the building and the camera.
In this test, I built five objects based on a 1x2x1 brick. With each new version, I doubled the size. So I had a 1x2x1, 2x4x2, 4x8x4, 8x16x8, and a 16x32x16 version.
Looking through the camera's viewfinder, I placed each variation at a distance where they all appeared to be about the same size in the viewfinder. Then I measured the distance between the camera and each size variation.
The photography math says that when you divide the width of the object by the distance away from the camera, the number you come up with should be the same for each size variation.
NOTE: actual math is
2*invtan*(distance/(2*width))
In this example it means that if you double the size of an object, it will need to be twice as far away to appear to be the same size in a picture. And, in fact, that is exactly what happened in this test.
So how does this help me take recreate my picture of the Capitol Building? Well, things I know from Google Earth and my picture. The Capitol is about 760 ft. wide and I took the picture from about 1/4 of a mile away.
I also know that the LEGO US Capitol model is 16 3/8 inches wide. So now I need to figure out where to set the camera on the National Mall MOC.
The calculated distance is about 31 3/8 inches between the camera and the LEGO US Capitol.
Time to go take the pictures to see how well it matches the real thing.
Forced Perspective (the long version)
Part 1 of 2:
I have been putting this off for quite a while because I just didn't want to think that hard. But the time has come to figure out how to realistically recreate photos of real-world architecture when taking pictures of micro-scale MOCs.
This is probably obvious to everyone but me, but I'm one of those people who has to actually do something to learn something...if that makes any sense.
The first photo I'm hoping to recreate is a picture I took of the US Capitol Building from 3rd Street, which defines the border between the National Mall and the Capitol Grounds.
Okay, so what does forced perspective have to do with all this? Well, the area a building takes up in a picture is dependent on many variables, but two of the most important are: 1) the size of the building and 2) the distance between the building and the camera.
In this test, I built five objects based on a 1x2x1 brick. With each new version, I doubled the size. So I had a 1x2x1, 2x4x2, 4x8x4, 8x16x8, and a 16x32x16 version.
Looking through the camera's viewfinder, I placed each variation at a distance where they all appeared to be about the same size in the viewfinder. Then I measured the distance between the camera and each size variation.
The photography math says that when you divide the width of the object by the distance away from the camera, the number you come up with should be the same for each size variation.
NOTE: actual math is
2*invtan*(distance/(2*width))
In this example it means that if you double the size of an object, it will need to be twice as far away to appear to be the same size in a picture. And, in fact, that is exactly what happened in this test.
So how does this help me take recreate my picture of the Capitol Building? Well, things I know from Google Earth and my picture. The Capitol is about 760 ft. wide and I took the picture from about 1/4 of a mile away.
I also know that the LEGO US Capitol model is 16 3/8 inches wide. So now I need to figure out where to set the camera on the National Mall MOC.
The calculated distance is about 31 3/8 inches between the camera and the LEGO US Capitol.
Time to go take the pictures to see how well it matches the real thing.