A Brief History of Pictorial Recession

[Sparrow]

We should also make the distinction between production and perception of the illusion. The conventions and skills required for the former are considerably higher than that of the latter. Hence children will be able to take part in the illusion much earlier than they can produce it.

As for the child recoiling from the drop, of course this is different because it is real space. There must be awareness that it is not a picture - lack of borders, smells and sounds for example. When it comes to 'recognizing' real space (3d) things become more complex in terms of instinct and learning. But with pictures, as we said before it is a set of current conventions that are learned.

I think its more simple than that, a young child draws what it knows at first and what it sees later. It has a cognitive reality (it represents what it knows to be there) prior to learning the graphic conventions we all take for granted later.

I suspect to a young child a 12mm fisheye and a 12mm rectilinear photo would look equally distorted because it had yet to learn which was the conventional representation

 

[Sparrow]

Try shooting with just about nothing but a 15mm lens for a few years, printing and/or posting full frame. You get to the point where you really start seeing that wide, and you've learn how to deal with the perspective. Or maybe our brains are pre-programmed to see that way, but we grow up in a world that requires readin' writin', and 'rithmatic and we start seeing just the details, nothing but the details. The birds flying overhead, but the sky is no longer part of the concept that it once was, when we wondered how the sky managed to hold the birds up there. Now it's just birds.

Try a 12 😀

PS yes I agree there is something liberating childlike about very wide lenses

and on a bessa L too

 

[amateriat]

I don't have a TV set. Problem solved.

Works for me. 😉

Very good thread you started, Stewart.


- Barrett

 

[pmun]

I think its more simple than that, a young child draws what it knows at first and what it sees later. It has a cognitive reality (it represents what it knows to be there) prior to learning the graphic conventions we all take for granted later.

I agree with that.

 

[Al Kaplan]

For a bunch of years I had a 12mm f/8 Spiratone fisheye. It would have made about a 30mm circular image if the frame didn't crop off the top and bottom. It wasn't very sharp either and f/8 is mighty slow. I did try the 12mm Heliar when a friend bought one but settled on the 15. It was both sharper and 2/3 of a stop faster, while not vignetting as badly as the 12mm.

 

[Roger Hicks]

For a bunch of years I had a 12mm f/8 Spiratone fisheye.

Dear Al,

So did I. It was a truly rotten lens, and the least useful focal length I ever owned. EDIT Though the one commercial shot I ever took with it was enough to pay for the lens: about $30, as far as I recall.

Tashi delek,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

the cv 12mm is a true Marmite lens, and has surprisingly less Field of View than the human eye.

I bought it on a whim despite not being a devotee of super-wide and found it very easy to use, and occasionally it spits out a nice pic that i never expected.

I hate Marmite by the way

 

[Sparrow]