Hi everyone… i’m wondering if anyone has a technique to make an orthographic photography of an object… i’ve found this one but just can’t manage to get a proper result…
Actually, you need to be looking at articles about View Cameras … the so-called “old timey” ones that have bellows.You should also Google: Scheimpflug Principle.In architectural photography, for example, you might want to be able to photograph a tall building without seeing “converging lines” in the picture. But if you try to photograph a building with an SLR, or with your phone or what-have-you, that’s what you’ll see. And the reason is that the film (or image) plane in such a camera is parallel to the lens plane, not the subject. You have to tilt your camera backward, and when you do, the image-sensor plane is no longer parallel to the building. That “old timey” camera has independent control over the plane of the lens and the plane of the film, thanks to that funny-looking bellows.
That’s what the “orthographic projection” feature basically tries to mimic.
The article you cited is just talking about how to try to “fake it” with a film/digital camera that isn’t capable of doing what needs to be done. If you want to read more about this kind of shooting, look for articles written for the type of film camera (the view-camera) that can. Your “magical CG camera” can also do this.
You can get close to orthographic with a long focal length lens. At about 200mm on a 35mm camera your images will be practically orthographic. Alternatively, use a shorter lens from a great distance, and magnify the section of interest. Perspective effects are all about some part of the subject being significantly closer to you than other parts, and hence seeming disproportionately larger. If the closest part is only about 1% closer than the furthest part you’re not going to notice the difference.
Thank you both for your time !
@sundial, that was very thorough, forgot to mention i was taking shots of my car for modeling reference and intend to make them as close to a blueprint as possible…
@crazychristina, i’ll try that today…