[PRCo] Camera Perspective

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Note to Roger in particular and others in general:

The apparent length of the 3800s is as much a product of the camera lens
as anything else.

Over the years we have changed our ideas of what is a normal focal
length lens for a camera. Today's belief is that a normal lens is
equivalent to the diagonal of the image produced.  Therefore, witn 35 mm
film, where the image is about .9 x 1.4 inches, the diagonal is about 
1.25 inches or 50mm.  

But in the 1920s, when we took a lot more head to foot pictures of the
person standing in front of us, the normal lens produced a much wider
field of vision.  The normal lens on Bill Vigrass's 616 camera would
roughly equate, in perspective, to about a 32 or 33 mm focal length lens
on a 35mm camera today ... very much a wide angle lens.  

Therefore the trolley tends to look much longer when photographed up
close than anything you photograph with today's cameras.  

Fred