The Focal Length of Lens and Visual Communication

Abstract

This article aims to understand the usage of lens focal length as an essential tool to communicate the meanings of visual features besides the photos. The study attempts to understand the natures of visual communication, the lens features used to build up visual characters, and the features of motion pictures as a primary medium used to communicate the visual meaning briefly. The result suggests that photo composition to control the meaning, composed of the angles and decision timing to select photos, has been essential for visual communication and influenced the specification of meaning direction. Lens features became a significant tool for photographers to control different angles, which are standard, wide-angle, and narrow-angle lenses. Each lens type illustrated four visual effects as follows. 1) Angle of view of the wide-angle lens demonstrates the screen area more than others and tells stories of places and times, while photos with a telephoto lens show communication of objects in the focal position. 2) Depth of field of the photos with the wide-angle lens deepened and describe stories with objects in every clear plane, contrary to photos with a telephoto lens displaying shallow clearness and communication of a specific object. 3) Optical distortion resulting from the wide-angle lens appearing in the barrel distorted photos representing abnormality. In contrast, photos with a telephoto lens displaying pincushion distortion frequently portray people's appearance with oval faces and slender shapes. 4) Perspective distortion of the wide-angle lens increased depth and object distance, presenting the distantness opposite to photos with the telephoto lens. Hence, lens selection of various focal lengths is an essential tool for photographers to choose the meaning. Additionally, the selection affected the problem resolution of on-set production significantly. The focal lens selection helps create visual meaning in the storytelling world differently from the real world in many cases, such as romantic, action, murder scenes, etc. Actors are not necessarily close or attack each other harshly as in the shown photos because camera angles and lens focal length are essential to creating different meanings from reality in terms of focal length features. If there are other types of innovation to create lens focus, invented visual communication tools will certainly be an option to select widely.