Beware the Telephoto Lens

A fortnight from Abbey Forth Property Management's first Facebook post passes and they post a photo.

I have recreated the shot above:       

Looks lovely doesn’t it – rolling hills in the background, lush pasture in the foreground even if the neighbours seem a bit close.

BUT, if you swing around to the right you get this lovely view with Camdean, the Business Park and Masterton in the background. A little less of the “rural idyll” ...............

If you take a photo from the other side of the A985 of course, you are likely to spoil the shot with the traffic but you do capture the grain dryers on Blackhall Farm.

The problem with all these shots is that they are taken with a telephoto lens and (just as a wide-angle lens distorts reality making small rooms look enormous) a telephoto lens makes near and distant objects seem closer together and more similar in size than they appear in real life. 

The reality is that “Poppyfields” Pattiesmuir is:



• Just short of 1 kilometer from the line of trees on the ridge in the first photo.
• 800m from the grain dryers in the farm.
• 750m from Camdean Estate
• 160m to the traffic on the A985
• and just 15m to the neighbour’s front door