What camera trickery could I use to make objects appear larger than they really are?

Hello,

What camera trickery could I use to make objects appear larger than they
really are? Other than using the zoom, is there anything else I can do?


Say I wanted to take a picture of a coin and I wanted it to look even bigger
than it is. Are there any other settings I could use to exaggerate its
size? My Canon A85 has full manual controls for aperature, shutter speed,
optical & digital zoom and such.

Ideas?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

Ever hear of a magnifying glass?

 

DSLR with macro lens plus extension tube(s).
http://www.trupin.com/photos/Macro/Quarter.jpg

 

Get closer? ;-)

Seriously, getting something to "appear larger" depends on what kind of
thing you have in mind, and how size is usually judged. Using the zoom can
magnify the image size obviously, but doesn't make an object "appear larger"
in any other way. E.g., if you took a photo of your car at a short focal
length and then zoomed to a long f.l. and took another shot, its image would
be larger but it would not "appear larger" in the sense of making the viewer
believe it was a bigger car.

People judge object size mostly by the surroundings of the object and/or by
perspective. If you take a photo of your car and via photo editing software
move it into a photo of a lot surrounded by houses, making it the same size
as a house, it will appear as big as a house (but no one will believe it, of
course). Whether the overall image is larger or smaller, the car will still
"appear" the size of a house.

You could move its image into a lot surrounded by houses making it the same
size as a house. ;-)

There isn't a lot you can do, if I understand your question correctly. You
can go into macro mode and fill the frame as much as possible with the coin,
of course, which will give you the largest image possible but won't really
make it "appear larger" in any other way. You still need other visual cues
to make it appear larger. If you shoot at a downward angle with the coin
close in the foreground and other objects of recognizable size in the
background, using your *shortest* focal length, this will exaggerate the
coin's size somewhat. It may also give you depth of field problems, however.
Try it and see.

Other than that, there is always a software solution as mentioned above.
With that you can make the coin appear as large as you like, or as large as
anyone will believe.

N.

 

I don't quite understand what you mean by "larger than they really are".

Do you want to take a photo of say a coin on a desktop, and have a
coin appear to be the largest object on the desk ?

Or, do you just want to take a photo of the coin and then
make a big print of it ?

If you want to do the latter, your camera should have a
macro mode. Just take a shot of the coin close up..

Then you can have it fill the whole screen on your monitor,
or you can have it fill an 8" x 10" print.

 

Jeff,

Most Canon cameras have some kind of macro mode. It is usually
activated by pressing a button with the symbol of a tulip/flower.
Using macro mode, the lens/focus combination will allow you to get
closer to a small object than when not using macro mode. The closer
you are, the larger the image. Without special additions (filters or
lenses) this is about as good as you can do with the camera alone. The
macro mode may be better at the wide angle or telephoto setting
depending on the camera.

Now that you have recorded the largest possible image, you may be able
to use some photo editing tools to make the image appear larger. There
are several ways to do this, I'll try to give them in preferred order.
The methods all involve cropping the image, which is to throw away all
the image except for a portion that is specified by you. You could
think of this as having the image printed on large paper and then
cutting out the 4x6 inch portion of the image you want - giving the
desired composition but at the expense of some losses in the larger
magnification.

1) upsize/resize the image to a larger size (make any corrections)
then crop the image to the size you want, sharpen the result
2) (make any corrections to the image), crop the image to the desired
"look" then upsize/resize the image and sharpen

It may be possible to find some "free" image manipulation tools that
allow the cropping and resizing actions. Irfanview may be a
possibility although I haven't used it lately.

Hope this gives you a useable idea.

Regards,
Roger

 

Jeff, your question is a little ambiguous. I can interpret your question in
two ways:

1. You want to know how to "magnify" a coin so that it takes up a large
part of the image, i.e., you want to take a macro shot; or,

2. You want the coin to look unnaturally large when compared to other
items in the photo, i.e., you want a sort of special effect that will make
the coin look as large as the person standing next to it.

I am an expert in neither area, in fact, I know very, very little about
either. Based on the way that you worded you question, and the fact that the
vast majority of photographic images aren't life size, I assume that your
questions pertains to the second interpretation.

I think what you are looking for is a technique called "forced perspective"
such as that used in movies to make some people or objects look larger than
others. I think this is usually accomplished by placing an object in the
foreground and then composing the background to make it appear as if the
object is part of the background, or vice versa.

If the first interpretation is what you mean, you simply need some macro
equipment or use the macro setting on your camera if it has one.

Eric Miller

 

Why bother with the camera? Just use layers in your post processing
work.


******************************************************

"I have been a witness, and these pictures are
my testimony. The events I have recorded should
not be forgotten and must not be repeated."

-James Nachtwey-
http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/

 

Jeff-

As you should realize, size can be acheived by cropping an image in your
graphics program, and printing the small object to cover the full width of
paper. But who whould belive you?

Someone wanting you to know the actual size of a coin might lay a ruler
next to it for comparison. So size is relative. You want to show your
coin in the same view with an easily recognized object for comparison, but
position the coin closer to the camera to appear larger, or further to
appear smaller.

This can be tricky because focus is critical when the difference in
distance is a high percentage. Using a wide-angle lens and a small
aperture you can increase depth of focus, but that may not be enough if
you are trying to achieve a large difference.

Fred

 

Our brains interpret size by relationships. If you put something in the
picture that appears large, such as a phone, the size of the coin is
interpreted as in relation to a normal phone, which the viewer knows the
size of. Now if the phone in the picture is a good miniature, then the
coin will be interpreted as larger. Filling most of the frame (macro)
with the coin will also help, as will removing any other size
indicators, such as wood grain on a desktop, etc.

Now WHY do you want to make the coin look larger?

 

Actually you could. If you were close to the car then the parts of the
car closest to the lens would appear much larger then the parts of the
car or the scene further from the lens. This is called foreshortening
and is a characteristic of a wide angle optic. The wider the lens the
greater the effect. Conversely the longer the lens the more compressed
the image becomes.

 

Your question only has one answer -- Use a wide angle lens and a very small
aperture. If the coin is in the foreground it will "appear" to be much
larger than the objects behind it, but everything has to be in focus. If I
took a picture of you at the zoo using the same technique I could easily
make you "appear" to be much larger than an elephant, but most people know
an elephant is bigger than a person.

Now, you asked about "camera" trickery, and that's the only answer I can
come up with based on the question. Obviously you can do a lot of things
with Photoshop and other software programs.

 

He doesn't have much cents.

 

: People judge object size mostly by the surroundings of the object
: and/or by perspective. If you take a photo of your car and via photo
: editing software move it into a photo of a lot surrounded by houses,
: making it the same size as a house, it will appear as big as a house
: (but no one will believe it, of course). Whether the overall image is
: larger or smaller, the car will still "appear" the size of a house.

I agree. And this effect can go both ways. I frequently like to take
macros of tiny delicate flowers, but they never had the impact on the
photo as they did in person. Until one day I simply placed a dime next to
this tiny flower that was about the same size as the dime. Suddenly the
tiny flower looked tiny. So I now make it a point to include some item
that is easily recognized by most anyone for comparitive size. Don't use a
lens cap as they come in so many sizes. But coins, or folding chairs, or
whatever included in an apropriate image will give a scale to judge size.

If you use this idea to play with scale you can fool the eye of the
viewers. For example puting a quarter on a finely detailed doll house
chair the quarter may appear to be the size of a car tire. Of course the
trick would be most effective if the background is similar to the scale of
the toy chair, or placed at such a distance to appear to be of the correct
scale.

One other trick that was touched on in the last sentance is that things
that are closer to the lens tend to appear larger than the items further
away, but for the trick to work both items need to be in focus. So this
trick is somewhat limited by the depth of field of the lens at the
particular set of settings. If you want a good demonstration of how this
is done, pick up a DVD of "Darby O'Gill and the Little People". In the
extra features there is a lot of demonstrations of using distance to make
aparent size differences with only purely optical tricks.

Randy

==========
Randy Berbaum
Champaign, IL

 

Good one!

 

Simple.

Wide angle lens.
-Coin really close to camera with a more distant background, or person
holding coin toward and close to camera.

Ever see pictures of animals where their snout/nose looks extremely
exaggerated and protruding?
That's all done with wides...where the nose is close toe the camera with the
rest of the body extending away from the camera.

Mark

 

People have suggested various in-camera tricks but the crudest and
most direct way is to just composite two pictures with an image
editor. You can make the coin the size of a house if you want.

 

Sure. But you're changing the situation as described and implied, Bob. What
I had in mind, and what I think the average reader would infer, was two
shots of the same car from the same position with the lens zoomed from short
to long focal lengths, such that the car would still be completely contained
in the long f.l. shot and of course would be much smaller in image size in
the shorter f.l. shot, assuming the same degree of final enlargement.

Yes, I COULD have spelled all that out in detail but I just didn't think it
necessary. ;-)

The car in such a case would not look like a larger car at the longer f.l.
even though its image size would be larger.

In fact to get any substantial degree of the foreshortening effect you
describe pretty much *requires* a quite short f.l., and the original
poster's camera, a Canon A85, is somewhat limited in this respect. However,
later in my reply I did suggest this, in connection with the coin he wants
to make appear larger:

"If you shoot at a downward angle with the coin
close in the foreground and other objects of recognizable size in the
background, using your *shortest* focal length, this will exaggerate the
coin's size somewhat."

That of course would be using the same principle of foreshortening that you
describe.

There are some other ways of making photographed objects appear larger or
smaller (e.g., in stereo photography, altering the interocular distance to
cause "gigantism" or "lilliputism"), but none that I know of that apply to
the OP's situation.

N.