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camera settings: FILM SIZE, what does this do?


gScott

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well focal length describes what is in focus and what is not, ie foreground objects, and objects in the distance, maybe it has something to do with that. I know when manually setting up a digital SLR you can set the focal length to focus on the landscape or objects closer to you.

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I haven't yet used the camera tool much at all but if it is designed to mimic a true camera then it should behave as follows:

Set the angle of view in the OIP to 45? (approximate field of view for human vision) and select 35mm as the film, the focal length is automatically set to 51mm which you may notice is very close to the standard lens for a 35mm camera. Now change the film to say 4" X 5" and notice that the focal length changes to 153mm. Thus preserving the camera's field of view. Same for all the other "film" sizes.

To risk vastly oversimplifying the matter, in the real world the advantage of larger film is greater resolution and perhaps the camera tool offers more pixels/inch with the larger film size.

I hope this helps.

Bob

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I believe the option is there so that you can use the Camera tool either way. Set the view and fine tune it and see what lens you need or pick the film size and lens and see what you get. The second way is very useful for previzualisation of movie sets which are often filmed with fixed focus (rather than zoom) lenses.

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I think that the Film Size setting does nothing more than change the focal length for any given Field of View, as Robert G. suggested. This is helpful if you have some idea about how you want to "shoot" your model. It's also helpful if you're trying to match an existing photograph (e.g. photo of site for use as background) with known focal length & film size.

Film size and focal length do NOT set Depth of Field (what is in and out of focus) in the camera tool or in a real-world camera. Aperture/f stop is the setting that would be used to control this in a real-world camera. Sadly, the VW camera OIP does not have this setting.

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