Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

The easiest way to visualize distances is to use a football field or a soccer pitch.
A football field (American) has to be 120 yards.
A soccer pitch can be between 100 yards and 130 yards depending on the use of the field (amateur or pro I guess).
If you are using a soccer pitch check with the head groundsman - who marks out the lines.
Take a handful of those little flags from a dollar store. The kind with thin metal staffs you can stick in the ground. (Or make them at home.) Pace out the length of the field at a normal walking pace. Count your paces and write it down. Walk back and place a flag halfway up the field. Walk back a quarter distance and plant another flag. Repeat so that you have 3 flags: quarter, half, and three quarters of the length of the field. Now go to the other side of the pitch and plant a flag every ten yards. (You can figure out how many paces make ten yards.)

Stand at one end of your field and notice how the distance between the 3 flags is foreshortened by your eyes and the distance from flag to flag. This foreshortening effect is what causes most people to misjudge distance. The greater the distance the greater the confusion.

Now go to the flags set at 10 yard intervals. Wow! The foreshortening effect is even more obvious. Count off your paces to pace out 10 yards without looking at the flags. If you are standing next to the first flag you have paced out accurately. Next try 20 paces and so on. You'll soon become very accurate at measuring distance.

If you need shorter distances grab the measure from your toolbox and mark out the distance you need in your yard. Put out your flags. Pace out the distance and write it down. Practise until you can hit your required distance with accuracy. You'll soon be judging distance with no problem.

If you are aiming to judge a long distance remember the foreshortening effect and imagine the distance in terms of the length of your sports field. For example: you may look at a tree and judge that it five football fields away (about 600 yards). Walk the distance and count your paces. A little trick here is to count your left foot only; this halves the count. Keep little pebbles or sticks in you pocket to match the number of 100 yards to the example tree. This means you have six pebbles in your pocket; as you pace out each 100 yards (fifty left foot on the ground) you drop a pebble. When you have dropped the last pebble you have walked six hundred yards. How close are you to your target the tree? The pebble idea helps you to keep count, it's hard to keep count over several hundred yards.

The number of paces will vary from person to person; this is of no consequence except to the person doing the pacing. Adjust your flags and mind as required for metres or yards.

I hope this helps you R.G. and Nightski. :shock:

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

Try this explanation, Nightski. Scroll down the page until you come to the adjustable setting for your DSLR lens and/or sensor (Look for Calculate Hyperfocal Distances)

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/hyperfocal-distance.htm

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Using a soccer pitch is a good idea. It gives you the 18 yard box round the goal mouth, the 12 yards from the goal to the penalty spot, as well as the width and length.

I suspect that most people have a known length that they use to visualise distances. To my mind the good thing about visualising paces is that it's flexible and can be used for any reasonable distance.

Nightski

Awesome post, Shakey! Thank you. :-D

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

Never knew that about soccer fields, R.G. That's an easy way to pace out short distances.

Thank you, Nightski.

All you guys have to do now is practise. :roll: :roll:

Nightski

I do Shakey ... right now is our business's busy time. I am having photography withdrawals. I get a brief time every morning after my run and that's it right now. Plus I have to walk my dog now after running, instead of letting her run with me. She blew out her knee and I have to walk her slowly one mile for four months. :roll: So that digs into that little space of time. :-(

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

Oh! Sorry to learn of your dog's injury. I hope, with your care, she'll be back to her old self in record time.
I know what you mean by photography withdrawals, right now Christmas has taken over and my wife and grown up children (well, the girls anyway) have taken charge.

:shock: :lol: :lol:

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Just curious; why the choice of 100mm telephoto for such a landscape/waterscape image where DOF and hyperfocality are important... rather than a shorter, more wide-angle lens with which a middling f/11 or f/8!would likely give you the depth you need?

Dave

Nightski

I really argued with myself over this, being well aware that telephotos are not the easiest vehicle for front to back focus, but I also wanted compression in this image, making the fish house look closer to the open water than it was ... not further away. My point in taking this shot is to convey the fear I feel for these people going out to their houses in mild weather on a lake where there are obviously underlying currents. Sure the ice is thick enough when they plant them, but when we get a heat wave after the cold I cannot help but wonder about weak places in the ice. I do have somewhat of an irrational fear of ice, but then it is true that people go through and die every year.

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

The image itself, it seems to be "right sided" to me.
I don't think the way the landscape was set up, allowed you to take the shot you wanted to take.
You want the fish shacks in the background, you want the river leading to it, but the front rocks do not really work for that.
If there was another group of interesting rocks around to the left, and you could get to them, you could set them up as an alternate foreground, and the background fish shacks diagonally opposed, with the sliver of river joining the foreground and background as a leading line.

I suspect it is my monitor, but the background fog looks blown to me, or just pushed that little bit too far.

regarding hyperfocality
To me the rocks look further away than 15 feet.
And hyperfocal for this combination is about 48 feet.
So if you focus on 50 feet, then you will be in focus from roughly 24 feet to infinity.
I believe you can get laser or infrared pointers that will give you distance, sort of an electronic tape measure, but what most do, and it only comes with experience, is go with "best estimate" and a "margin of safety" for error.

I've never been one for "third of the way into the shot".
If you are squatting down, 1/3 of the way in is very close to you, if you are standing, it is much further away.

Regarding lens choice, yes it is harder to get hyperfocal with longer lenses, but the options they open up for landscape shots instead of being stuck in an ultrawide mentality, is essential to do if you are serious about your landscape work. Ultrawide is wonderful, but other strings to the bow are desirable as well.

It is very easy for me and others to tell you, how to shoot in these conditions, from the warmth of our home/office or cosy front porch, while we lean back in the rocker sipping a beer etc.
Please realise that I do accept how treacherous it can be, and how unfriendly to photography it can be sometimes, especially if you have been out there a while, and the hands and feet stop working properly, and the brain gets fuzzled by the sheer cold and uncomfortableness of it.
I know you don't just hop out of the car and shoot from the edge of the carpark, then hop back in the car.
As we do it more, in all sorts of conditions and over extended periods of time, this stuff all becomes much easier, and some of it, becomes second nature so that you don't even realise you are making all sorts of decisions "on the fly".

Nightski

The laser tool might really help me when I am out and about until I get a feel for distances. Do you think it looks right sided because the water/ice line is leading away from the ice houses?

Graham did suggest my 50mm and I would agree with him, but I do want that compression. That is what the shot is all about. Yes, getting cold makes it harder to navigate icy rocks with a camera and tripod. Thank you for commenting, lighthouse.

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

I think it looks right sided because I see it leading away from the rocks ..... but I don't see it leading back to the fishhouses, so to me, it lacks that connect joining the left to the right side. So therefore I just see the rocks and the fishhouses on the right side.

Nightski

Maybe I could get that guy to move his fish house over a bit. :lol: Just kidding ... it will happen. Sometimes you just have to wait for the exact right situation. I know it's there. I just have to keep an eye out for the right composition.

Nightski

You know, lighthouse, i was thinking about the lens choice. Another reason why I didn't choose my 16-35mm is because I didn't really have strong foreground element in this image. I was wishing that the ice/water line would just lead in to my subject .. but really .. I could have done without the rocks. And to me, if you're going to use a wide angle on something like those rocks, you have to be right up on them .. not far away. If you're far away from your foreground element, you need to use a telephoto to bring it in. What say you?