Re: If our eyes were a human-invented camera/camcorder....

E

ectobuilder

Veteran
Re: If our eyes were a human-invented camera/camcorder....

Not sure where to post this but here we go.

So if our eyes were a camera/camcorder, what specs would it have?
 
I'm not sure, but I would guess around 35mm, although it's hard to say due to our peripheal vision. I do know for fact that our eyes are like a camera lens in that the image is upside down, Our brains flip it vertically and horizontally. Thats why if you lay on your side and watch tv, we still see it correctly.
 
I've read that 50mm or 55mm focal length is closest to the what the human eye sees if that's what your after. That's why they are called normals.

Most of what you see is made up by the brain, not captured by the eye. The eye captures far more information than the brain can process so the brain filters the essentials and makes up the rest. That's one of the things magician's exploit, we tend to see what we expect to see (also exploited by editors and fx people). Apparently in a life and death situation the brain will sometimes feed the raw image to speed reaction times. We live in the past, I can't remember the exact time but I think it was about an 1/8th of a second between receiving and processing the image normally. Much longer than you'd expect. Elite sportsman were found to be able to access this state more easily.

We only see colour in the very centre of our vision, peripheral vision is black and white (to react faster to the shadow of a looming predator). Our eye darts around a lot to flesh out the details and fudge a wider peripheral vision. You can't do this with a camera without getting seasick. I suspect the reason cuts, close ups and inserts feel so natural because our eye is constantly drawn to details. As I recall, the recent Sherlock Holmes films emulate this property quite well in the pre-fight scenes when Downey Jr plans his attack.

Point is that the eye can't objectively compared to a lens primarily because of the interpreting device after it. But the 50mm will get you closest to the perspective of human sight.
 
Also in terms of actual specs...there's no standardisation in the manufacture of the human eye so you could compare your own eye to a lens but that wouldn't necessarily hold true for mine. Sorry. :)

It is interesting to think about though. It doesn't make it any less fun to set your camera up with a 50mm lens and try to match what you see on the monitor to what you see through a viewing frame. Not that I've ever tried something as lame as this...I swear! :P Of course come back in ten minutes and it won't look the same anymore.
 
I wonder how many MP it would take to equal 20/20 vision and how many stops of DR we have [people with 20/20 that is].

Lens: I think 28 mm to 35mm is closer to what people actually see field of vision wise but 50mm may show a 1 to 1 image size.
 
The designer would get the sack for putting the sensor (Retina) in back-to front, with a socking great hole in it :Drogar-Evil(DBG):
 
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