cam -VS- zoom

 

This is my favorite tip EVER! It comes from Xavier, an amazing RL and SL photographer who you might know inworld. (He also introduced me to Sunny's!) 

This little trick gave me so much control over my photos and made it way more fun to do some shots that looked much better, so easily: 

Learn to play with both your camera distance and the zoom!

Obviously if you use the Camera controls, maybe you already do... 

But if you are like me, always camming with Alt and mouse, you might not have a perfect understanding on the difference between the distance and zoom or how to do each one.

Distance is pretty simple, you move closer, you move away... But when doing this, just like your eyes, the camera will distort your image, as the perspective changes with a different point of view. That's what happens when you want to do a beautiful closeup and you have such a different face you rather back away!

See the nose is much bigger and the shoulders look very narrow. It looks like she's nosey, trying to peek through the computer screen! 

On the other hand, the zoom doesn't change perspective. So when you love what you see, but want to see more of it, try to play with the zoom instead of moving your camera. You can do it through the Camera Controls button, but it's much easier with the keyboard commands. 

Ctrl 8 = Zoom Out

Ctrl 9 = Reset Zoom

Ctrl 0 = Zoom In

Now look at the same image, when I zoom in instead of moving in: 

The body and face proportions are much nicer and it looks more natural. 

Obviously you need to balance both to have as much of the background as you want, notice her that we see it closer, but we see less of it. It works well here, but might need your personal fine tuning on another shot. 

The main thing is to know what you can do and PLAY PLAY PLAY with it! 

Have fun! xx