Perspective and small objects

[Madeliefste Oh]

While making product pictures, I always experience that the perspective is too strong when I shoot smaller objects. This looks rather unnatural, so I do correct it with the perspective option in Photoshop.

In next picture nr 1 shows how the snapshot looks, nr 2 is after correction in Photoshop.

 

 

Now my question is: is there a way to manipulate the angle of perspective in SL? So that I do not need to correct the perspective in Photoshop all the time?

Anybody who experienced with perspective in SL photography?

[Cerise Sorbet]

You can try the field of view setting. Ctrl+9 is the default, Ctrl+8 and Ctrl+0 alter it. A few Ctrl+0 steps may be what you want for these closeups.

Viewers generally call this "zoom", but it's a very different effect than we get from the mouse wheel or Alt+up/down.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I've experienced it in pictures I've taken in SL.  I found I get pretty results by changing the angle of my camera view to a more overhead view by a few degrees.  What I notice in your method using the perspective tool in editing is that all your items on the cutting board are different sizes.  That happens with the camera angle change too but it's a little more natural in my opinion.  Either way you are distorting the image slightly but using the perspective tool in post production appears to be un-natural.  If you will look closely at that appears to be a brie wheel (lower right corner of the cutting board) you see a loss of definition on the cheese texture.........the un-edited looks natural and the edited looks a little blurred with almost no definition to the texture.  I think moving the camera angle would help in that respect.

Plus you wouldn't have to edit the picture to get a better perspective.

[Theresa Tennyson]

Under "Preference" - "Move and View" you can adjust your "View Angle", which is the equivalent of changing the focal length of a camera lens. Push the slider left for "telephoto" and right for "wide angle." If you push it slightly to the left you should be able to take pictures of small objects with less perspective. That's a trick RL photographers use for portraits and probably merchandise photos too.

[Cerise Sorbet]

Yep. Note that the "view angle" preference and the Ctrl+8/9/0 keys control the same setting. So if you play with both, that will be why the preference slider didn't stay where you remembered putting it.

[Madeliefste Oh]

Thanks for your replies. I tried the ctrl functions first. To me it seems that is just a zoom function. At least the angle doesn't seem to change.

 

 

I will give it a try with the tips of changing view angle.

[Cerise Sorbet]

They are not just zoom, but you will need to pull your camera back after you change the FOV, because the camera is covering a different sized slice of the world.

[Madeliefste Oh]

Finetuning both view angle and distance in 'preferences' does the trick!

 

Thanks all for the photography lesson.

 

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Cerise Sorbet wrote:

They are not just zoom, but you will need to pull your camera back after you change the FOV, because the camera is covering a different sized slice of the world.

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Oh, that might be the case, Cerise. I don't remember for sure if pulled the camera back or not. I think I did not.

[Cerise Sorbet]

Really for others who come across this thread -- This is a quicky snap showing a basic cube with the extreme "Zoom"/"View Angle" settings on each side, and the default in the middle. This can be fun for all kinds of pictures.