[BC] Negativity

[Glen Kippel]

On 4/24/07, Sid Schweiger <sid at wrko.com> wrote:
>
>
> I was one of the engineers that built the WKOX site, and two utterly
> deceptive photos don't prove a damn thing.  The first was taken with an
> extremely long lens (the photographer had to have used a tripod,
> otherwise zooming in at that distance would have blurred the photo); in
> reality that tree is nowhere near the fence or the tower base.  The
> second photo shows some trees and shrubs, but again, they're nowhere
> near the tower bases.  (And as for the boom-box trailer that shows in
> the second photo, that was not originally WJLT's, as another photo in
> the series claims.  It was originally purchased and outfitted for WKOX
> and the old WVBF.  I know.  I and another engineer were working there
> when it was purchased, and we installed all the equipment in it.)


-------------

You are quite right.  I would guess that the first picture was taken with a
35-mm camera using at least a 200-mm lens.  A tripod would not have to be
used if reasonably fast film was used with a shutter speed of 1/250 or
faster.  On a reasonably sunny day this is quite doable.

The second picture was taken with a wide-angle lens, perhaps 28-mm and
angled upward.  You can tell this because the towers are not parallel.  Just
as a long lens brings the background and foreground closer together, a
wide-angle pushes the perspective of the background farther away.  The tree
is nowhere near the towers, but is a fairly short tree close to the camera.


Deceptive?  Yes.  The only true perspective with a 35-mm camera is with a
focal length of around 50 to 55 mm.  This renders the perspective the way
the eye sees it.