Modern cameras allow photographs to be taken either in standard mode (i.e. walk-up), or with a zoom to make the shot look closer to the subject than it really is. Zooming is becoming more commonplace, for example, in mobile phone photography, enabled by high pixel counts and optical and digital image stabilization of modern mobile devices.
Zoomed-in photos, either shot with zoom lenses or created using digital zooming, reduces natural depth perspective of the image, thereby “flattening” it. In some cases, this can be desirable and is used as a photographic effect. However, when the effect is unwanted, the photographer is left with an image that appears less dramatic than if he/she was able to approach the subject due to a lack of relative “depth” to subjects at different distances.
When a photo is taken at close range, objects that are far away appear smaller than objects that are near. This allows the natural depth to be understood from the image. Zooming tends to flatten an image. For example, in a zoomed shot of a herd of zebra, occluded ones are not smaller than un-occluded ones as they would be if instead the photographer had walked up to the herd to take the photo at close range. A viewer of the image would see the lack of depth and infer that the photographer was far from the herd when taking the shot. Thus, there exists a need for improvements in zoom photography.
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