Parallax problems
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 Hints and tips by Philip Grosset If you'd like to submit photos for criticism, click here. |
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| This was the photo I wanted to take, as seen in an optical viewfinder. The lens was two feet from the subject. |
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| This was the result I actually got. It wasn't what I had seen in the viewfinder! This problem does not arise if you're using the LCD screen of a digital camera. |
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| What went wrong here? | |||||||||||||||||||
| It is what can happen to extreme close-ups. It occurs when an optical viewfinder is positioned above the camera lens, so doesn't cover quite the same area at very close distances. With some cameras, the viewfinder is also on one side of the lens, so these are even less accurate. It was to overcome these parallax errors that viewfinders often used to be marked with lines (shown below) that gave some indication where the top (and side) of the picture would be when shooting really close. If you have to make use of these, remember to focus, as usual, on the most important part of the picture, then semi-depress the camera release to lock the focus in place before adjusting the camera to allow for parallax.
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| With this camera viewfinder, use the guide line on the right to tell you where the top of the picture will come for close-ups. | |||||||||||||||||||
| With this camera, the viewfinder is not immediately above the lens, so the marks indicate the top and left-hand edge of the picture for close-ups. This is obviously less convenient than just having to allow for the height. |  |
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| Some cameras just indicate the top corner of the area covered in extreme close-up. | |||||||||||||||||||
Simple guide marks can only give a rough indication.You'll require quite a lot of experimenting to use them successfully! If you are going to do a lot of really close-up work, you'd be much better off with a SLR (single lens reflex) camera, when you actually look through the lens, or a digital camera when your LCD screen will give you an accurate picture. Well, not always entirely accurate because the LCD screen sometimes shows a slightly smaller area than that actually captured. But you'll avoid parallax problems. |
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NEXT PAGE PICKING THE BEST VIEWPOINT |
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