What's the ideal setting for Poser's main camera? duh.... I'm not into photography so I won't know how to tell the difference (unless someone has the patience to guide me on my way). But why is there a camera setting in Poser? Thanks in advance.

Been wanting some opinions myself....:-)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=553851&Start=25&Artist=karen1573&ByArtist=Yes

A majority of people will tell you to make the focal value for the main camera 100. This flattens things out, removing the "fish eye" effect. It also allows for more acurate tracking for things (like eyes for example) that are pointed at the main camera. People seem to think this is the most "realistic" looking setting for the focal. I use it most often. Sometimes if you want a different effect you can use a lesser value, this increases the fish eye effect, enlarging the things closest to the camera and shrinking things further away - it depends on the look you're trying to get. It is hard to notice a difference for settings past 100 or so. In another thread some time ago, I think someone said the human eye has a "focal value" of about 55 in poser terms. Someone correct me if that is incorrect. Hope this helps some, Unzipped

I like the POV on that image, Karen. Thanks for your tip.

I use 120 on full body shots. Looks ok to me but I think I'll try other settings. If only I knew what to look for (focal wise, I mean).

I'll take a page from Jhonny5..... I NEED MORE INPUT.....

Message edited on: 05/18/2004 13:29

Unzipped.... So a setting of 100 is a good bet. But what about the settings for the other cameras? Why are there settings for these cams considering the rendered image is based on the main camera?

Message edited on: 05/18/2004 13:26

Because you can render from any of the cameras you have. This is useful to get shots of the same scene from different angles, and lots of other stuff. You can use the face camera to get a head shot, then use the main camera to get a full figure shot, then use the dolly camera to get a panoramic shot - each one with their own settings. Say you were doing a scene of two people talking and you wanted to get 3/4 face shots of the person who's doing the talking at the time. You could move the main camera every time you switch to view the person talking, or you could set up two cameras, one for each shot and simply switch back and forth between the cameras to change what you see. Stuff like that - less work for you. The renderer will use whatever camera you currently have selected. So if you're viewing with the Aux Camera when you hit render, then that's the camera that will be used to create the render. Hope this helps, Unzipped

Attached Link: http://www.fallencity.net/tut-geep/index.php

BOOKMARK

The focal length (for 35mm cameras) closest to the human eye is 58mm. No one really knows what standard the poser cameras are based on (or if they do, they haven't told me), but everyone assumes it's 35mm. So a good focal length for a 'normal' view would be around 60mm. For portraiture, most photographers use an 80 - 120mm lens, although I've used 20mm for portraits too. Pretty weird, but effective if you want the pic to jump out the page. I've used the poser cameras at everything from 2 - 2000mm, and as unzipped says, over 100mm it's hard to tell the difference. The 'best' camera length is the one that's right for what you're doing, but like anything else, you need to know the rules, so you can break them. Any basic photography tutorial will tell you the main uses for all the different focal lengths. You might find something in the photography section here at rosity. mac PS Don't forget copy/paste for cameras. That's a very useful function. Say you've set up the main cam at a weird angle and want a 2nd one further away. Select the main cam and press ctrl-c, then select say, the aux cam and press ctrl-v to paste. It'll now be identical to the main cam and you can zoom out, move around, whatever. If you want your original POV, go back to main cam.

"In another thread some time ago, I think someone said the human eye has a "focal value" of about 55 in poser terms." I read that same thing about 10 years ago. I think it was in the Time-Life series on photography. Of course, they didn't mention "poser terms." They were talking about the focal length of a lens on a 35mm SLR.

Thanks for all the tips everyone. I didn't know you can render from other cams. So much to learn, hoboy. Unzipped, that is a gold mine of tutes. I've always been curious of those magnets. Thanks.

"In another thread some time ago, I think someone said the human eye has a "focal value" of about 55 in poser terms." I think I'm responsible for making that statement in a thread some time ago. Just keep in mind that focal values depend on the size of the film used. 55 mm (or somewhere in that neighborhood) is a value for the human eye compared to focal lengths used by a 35 mm camera. If you look at a digital camera, the values are different since the film plane is smaller. A medium format camera used by studio photographers (Hasselblad and others) has a 60x60 film format, that means that the "human eye equivalent" is a focal length of 80 mm. But, as stated above, it appears that the Poser figures are based on a standard 35 mm camera.

So now I've got some questions. If the human eye focal value for poser purposes (assuming a 35 mm base) is around 55 mm, why do things seem to look "better" at around 100 mm? I'm not being sagacious, I'm actually hoping someone more familiar with photography/cameras can fill us in on the science behind that. Certainly the "right" focal value also depends greatly on the effect desired, but it seems for normal, everyday, "realistic" shots we always get the advice that 100 is the best setting for the camera. Or is "better" just totally subjective and some people are happier with the results they get rendering at around 55 to 60 mm? Unzipped PS. Yes Dr. Geep is the king of poser tutorials. There should be a permanent link to his tutorials at the top of this forum's page.

unzipped, In photography, 100mm is considered 'better' for head shots and portraits. Longer (telephoto) lenses flatten perspective slightly, and short (wide-angle) lenses exaggerate it. What happens is this. When you frame someone's head with a longer lens, you're standing further away from them. With a short lens, to get the same framing, you have to go up very close to them, and the exaggerated perspective makes their nose look big, etc. You can frame a head with a 100mm lens from 6 feet away. With a 24mm wide-angle, you'd be 1 foot away. That's the 'science' of it, but it's really just common sense. I've been a fashion photographer for 20 years, so it's my job to know this stuff. But as I said up above, you need to know the rules so you can break them. Here's an example you'll recognise. Practically every rap singer used to get photographed in the same way - with a wide-angle lens, hands into the camera, and wildly exaggerated perspective. Dunno how this look came about, but it caught on. Well, that's an example of breaking the rules. But, if you ever try doing a portrait with a 20mm lens, you'll find out that it's not so easy. (For a start, you're so close that your own shadow falls on the subject, so you have be good with lighting). Once you know what you're doing and why it works, you can go your own way. mac

"That's the 'science' of it, but it's really just common sense." It may be common sense to you (someone who's been working with cameras for 20 years), but to a clown like me who struggles just to use a disposable camera, it's very insightful stuff. I've never really thought much about it before Poser. So keep the info comming - like you said it helps to know the rules (or how things work) before you try to start bending them. Unzipped

This is also why portraits looks crappy with a disposable or low-budget camera. They usually have a fixed, pretty short focal length, around 35 mm, suitable for landscape pictures. OK for tourist photography, but bad for portraits and close ups. Spend some more money on a camera with e.g. a 28-100 mm zoom and you will have a range making it possible to take decent pictures of any kind. Another note on making portraits with long focal lengths: Since this means that the photographer gets further away, the subject might also feel more at ease with the whole photo situation and the pictures come out better, more relaxed. Doesn't matter with Poser figures, but in real life it makes a difference ;-) Why do we have to trick the eye this way when the human eye has a fixed focal length? I don't know, maybe our brain has a way of compensating distorted shapes that occurs when we look at objects at different distances. I'm pretty astigmatic and when I'm not wearing contact lenses or glasses, my brain adjusts for the errors caused by my eyes. If someone else puts on my glasses they will get a distorted view of things and e.g. miss a door handle when they try to grab it. I can do it correctly both with our without glasses since my brain adjusts without me noticing it. Maybe our brains adjusts for perspective problems at different distances as well.

This is good stuff. Keep em coming. Extra tips on Photography is well appreciated. As for Poser, I'll play around with the focal values to get what I want. I surmise that 55 is a good starting value.

Yep, kelderek. You're right about distance and the psychological factor in portraits. No one likes having a lens shoved in their face, so you're more likely to get better results by using a longer lens and keeping your distance (at least with non-prefessional models). Of course, in poser, it's no problem. Re the human eye - yes, it does have a fixed focal length, but the eye is one of the most complex organs in the body and it has lots of tricks that we're barely even aware of. There's an entire department of the brain that's responsible for perspective and judging distance. Ever wondered how you know how far away objects are? If you didn't, you'd be in trouble. First time you crossed the street, the car you thought was 50 feet away would be on top of you. It's partly to do with stereoscopic vision, but the eye has a way of filtering out unwanted information too. Try this experiment. Don't think. Just look around you and fix on the first object that catches your eye. Once you're focussed on it, without moving your eyes, try and see how much stuff there is in the 'frame' of your vision. You'll be surprised. If you look at the TV, your vision can also pick up everything else in the room within a 180 degree circle. That's peripheral vision, or what we call 'seeing out the corner of our eye'. The thing is, our brain processes the information gathered by our eyes according to what we're concentrating on at the time, and filters out everything else. This is the trick a camera can't do. So you have to choose exactly what you put in front of the camera, then choose the amount you want it to see. You can improve your poser camera technique a lot by walking round real life objects and learning to look at them from different angles. Grab a brick or something and see how many ways there are of looking at it. Then do the same in poser. Use the camera to 'walk around' the stuff in the scene. You'd be surprised how quickly results improve once you start thinking about what you're doing and why you're doing it. That's why it's interesting to realise how amazing human vision actually is. It makes you stop and go 'Wow!' and that's what an artist needs. The 'Wow!' factor. LOL. I'll tell you a thing about photography. There's really nothing new under the sun no matter what technology comes along. But a lot of the best photographs all have one thing in common, and that's impact. Good photographers don't just plant themselves in front of an object and snap. They crawl under it, or climb on top of it, or go in real close. And the best photographs are taken in such a way that they jump out the page at you. That's impact. Hmmm.... I notice I haven't added a single technical detail about cameras. Well, that's good. You know why? Because any camera is just an extension of what we see ourselves. So the best way to take pictures (or use poser cameras) is to learn to see. mac

OK, this is my take on it. Forget about focal lenght! First decide your point of view, where is the person observing the scene standing? Got it, OK put the camera there. Now adjust the focal length to include as much or as little of the scene as you desire. Focal length does not change perspective, the point of view determines perspective, and from any particular POV the perspective will always be the same no matter what the focal lenght. What focal lenght determins is the width of view, hold a bit of paper with a suqare hole in it in front of your eyes, move it further away, you will see less of the scene, this is the same as chainging the focal length to a longer length. Your document window is the hole in the paper.

Oh yes technical details...I edited my Poser 4RuntimePREFSpreferredState.pz3 setting the limits on the scale channels of my main camera to forceLimits 4 min 1 max 1 (100%) Becaus I dislike the way Poser 4 rescales the camera when I chainge the focal length.

lesbentley has it right, but stops just short of why changing the focal length seems to change the perspective. That hole in the paper, of different apparent size, gets squeezed or stretched to fit an image of fixed apparent size. Incidentally, all a longer lens does is magnify the final image, whether with glass or with a "digital zoom". Now, do you ever use a background image? What lens was that shot with? If it was shot with a wide-angle you can always crop the edges to match the angle of view of the Poser camera, but getting the right size could be tricky. But that may be why something doesn't look quite right. The thing to watch for is parallel lines converging in the background. That's the big give-away.

The general rule seems to be to use a focal length of 90-120. But, you should also know when to break the rules as well. Sure, every portrait should be taken with a 100mm focal length, looking straight at the subject. Try these:

• If your character is a super-hero: move the camera down and point it up at the character. Adjust the focal length to around 60-80. The odd angle and fish-eye-ness will give him a sense of power.
• Alternaticely, move the camera up, adjust the focal length to around 30-50... your character now has a sense of smallness.
• Try lower focal lengths when making images of non-human things. Move the camera right up to the nose of the X-Wing Fighter and adjust the focal length to 25. See what happens.
• Maybe your scene is a close-up of a crazed person. In that case, give him a strange expression and set the focal length to a small value: 10 or 15. Like good photography, think about what your image is saying.
• Is your image a simple "stand and pose" image? In this case, you don't have to worry so much.
• Or is it a "moment in time" image? In this case, you should think about your character's motivation, the background, and the events before the image was "shot". Finally, find some images you really like. Look at how the artist built it: from the composition to the lighting to the colors to the character's expression to the camera angle.