iPhone Air iPhone Air’s makeshift Ultrawide lens

[bill-p]

Normal people take ultrawide photos all the time. You make it sound like 0.5x is some special tool.

Human peripheral vision is close to the field of view of 0.5x. This is why so many people use the UW lens.

If you had a UW lens, we'd be able to see half the room, not just a corner of it.

Actually, no. Human's real field of view is equivalent to about 43mm on a 35mm-equivalent image plane.

Meaning... the 2x lens is actually closer to what humans see in perspective. The difference is that since most of us have 2 eyes and not just the one, the actual result of the total field of view is a combination of both eyes, thus leading to a focal length of... surprise: around 21mm.

Which... incidentally, is actually NOT ultra wide. Note: Ultra wide or 0.5x on iPhones is about 13mm, which... no matter what metric you want to use is NOT what humans see.

Please research the topic a bit more deeply before making these statements.

Please also note: I'm not dismissing the fact that perhaps more people are using their UW lenses. But I'd highly suggest that you research human eye perspective first before saying the 0.5x view is closer to what people see. It's really not.

 

[4sallypat]

Actually, no. Human's real field of view is equivalent to about 43mm on a 35mm-equivalent image plane.

Meaning... the 2x lens is actually closer to what humans see in perspective. The difference is that since most of us have 2 eyes and not just the one, the actual result of the total field of view is a combination of both eyes, thus leading to a focal length of... surprise: around 21mm.

Which... incidentally, is actually NOT ultra wide. Note: Ultra wide or 0.5x on iPhones is about 13mm, which... no matter what metric you want to use is NOT what humans see.

Please research the topic a bit more deeply before making these statements.

Please also note: I'm not dismissing the fact that perhaps more people are using their UW lenses. But I'd highly suggest that you research human eye perspective first before saying the 0.5x view is closer to what people see. It's really not.

Makes a lot of sense!

UW to me looks distorted - almost fisheye lens.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Kjabean]

Couldn’t you just clip an ultra wide lens to the back of it if you want it that bad… I have seen good glass ones as cheap as $60. If you don’t need great glass you can find them much cheaper. Seems like a better solution to me.

 

[bill-p]

Makes a lot of sense!

UW to me looks distorted - almost fisheye lens.

Thanks for the clarification.

To be clear, I think this topic has confused people a lot because they keep thinking human vision is one unified whole, whereas everyone actually has 2 different kinds of vision: direct central vision that’s always in clear focus where everything is clearly “seen”, and peripheral vision where we more or less can “sense” vague shapes but cannot discern clearly the distance.

Direct central vision is what I mentioned above. It is about 43mm on average. Human eye shapes are actually not the same so some people may in fact see a bit wider than this and some will see a bit narrower, but most people generally see about 43mm in direct central vision. Both eyes combined will give about between 18mm to 24mm, thus… on average, it’s about “21mm” per se. Here’s a link with a bit more in depth explanation:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/find/newsLetter/The-Photographic-Eye.jsp

Peripheral vision is much wider, of course. Some have estimated the full field of view to be equivalent to about 8mm in focal length. But most people naturally do not “see” in this peripheral vision. It’s actually a combination of our eyes “sensing” shapes in its corners, and the brain filling in details by “stacking” images over time. You can even confirm this easily by keeping your head where it is and just moving your eyes up, down, left and right. Notice that peripheral vision just becomes clearer… but without becoming significantly wider.

So yeah, that’s why: the brain has always “tricked” us into thinking we could see wider, but in reality, we really can’t. When looking at a very wide scenery, our eyes tend to rapidly move around to “scan” the entire scene, and our brain “computes” a whole model of the scene which then gives us the impression that we can see very widely (“ultra wide”?) and that everything is in clear focus.

The closest thing we can do with a camera to capture what humans see, is to actually combine photos taken with a “normal” lens around 43mm in a panorama. The panorama will then look more “normal” to us than rectilinear ultra wide lenses.

Image above came from this video:

 

[4sallypat]

To be clear, I think this topic has confused people a lot because they keep thinking human vision is one unified whole, whereas everyone actually has 2 different kinds of vision: direct central vision that’s always in clear focus where everything is clearly “seen”, and peripheral vision where we more or less can “sense” vague shapes but cannot discern clearly the distance.

Direct central vision is what I mentioned above. It is about 43mm on average. Human eye shapes are actually not the same so some people may in fact see a bit wider than this and some will see a bit narrower, but most people generally see about 43mm in direct central vision. Both eyes combined will give about between 18mm to 24mm, thus… on average, it’s about “21mm” per se. Here’s a link with a bit more in depth explanation:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/find/newsLetter/The-Photographic-Eye.jsp

Peripheral vision is much wider, of course. Some have estimated the full field of view to be equivalent to about 8mm in focal length. But most people naturally do not “see” in this peripheral vision. It’s actually a combination of our eyes “sensing” shapes in its corners, and the brain filling in details by “stacking” images over time. You can even confirm this easily by keeping your head where it is and just moving your eyes up, down, left and right. Notice that peripheral vision just becomes clearer… but without becoming significantly wider.

So yeah, that’s why: the brain has always “tricked” us into thinking we could see wider, but in reality, we really can’t. When looking at a very wide scenery, our eyes tend to rapidly move around to “scan” the entire scene, and our brain “computes” a whole model of the scene which then gives us the impression that we can see very widely (“ultra wide”?) and that everything is in clear focus.

The closest thing we can do with a camera to capture what humans see, is to actually combine photos taken with a “normal” lens around 43mm in a panorama. The panorama will then look more “normal” to us than rectilinear ultra wide lenses.

View attachment 2566695

Image above came from this video:

You sound like my flight instructor teaching me about night flying and the vision uses different cones/rods which relate to spatial awareness and ability to discern outside air traffic..

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Normal people take ultrawide photos all the time. You make it sound like 0.5x is some special tool.

Human peripheral vision is close to the field of view of 0.5x. This is why so many people use the UW lens.

If you had a UW lens, we'd be able to see half the room, not just a corner of it.

Tbh I used to shoot a ton of photos and barely used UW in my composition . Main or télé . Maybe because UW were so bad a few years ago

 

[deuxani]

Couldn’t you just clip an ultra wide lens to the back of it if you want it that bad… I have seen good glass ones as cheap as $60. If you don’t need great glass you can find them much cheaper. Seems like a better solution to me.

I was thinking the same thing. This is a good solution for Air users who only sometimes need multiple lens options and most of the time want to enjoy a thin phone.

The only issue is that the good ones always require a proprietary case. It would be nice to see some easy clip on or MagSafe solutions specifically for the Air.