As I have understood this, perspective is a function of distance from the subject. If you take a shot with a 50 and a 200 and crop the result from the 50 to match the 200, you get the same shot. So zooming has the effect of cropping, not changing perspective. Of course, distortion is a different matter. As I have seen, zooms do have more distortion than primes. How bad this is depends on your standards and how good your zoom is.
Gee whiz, Shel, 7:19 am and you're thinking about zooms? At that time for me sipping hot coffee is still an adventure. ;-) Steven Desjardins Department of Chemistry Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA 24450 (540) 458-8873 FAX: (540) 458-8878 [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/24/05 7:13 AM >>> OK, with all the discussion about zooms here these past months, I got to thinking about how such a lens is used. It seems that if you are standing at a certain spot and want to fill the frame with the subject, you'd use the zoom feature to do so. But, is the perspective the same as if you used a shorter focal length prime lens and moved closer to the subject, assuming that in both cases the subject fills the frame to the same degree. Zooms (from my limited experience) seem to have more distortion at the wider and longer ends of their focal range compared to primes of a similar focal length. Is that a generally fair statement? Shel
