There is an old phrase, “the camera does not lie“, which can be interpreted as both true and false. In historic photos where there was little done in the way of manipulation, the photograph often did hold the truth of what appeared in the scene. In modern photographs that are “enhanced” this is often not the case. But there is another perspective. The phrase is true because the camera objectively captures everything in the scene within its field of view. But it is also false, because the human eye, is not all seeing, perceiving the world in a highly subjective manner – focusing on the object (or person) of interest. Most photographs tend to contain far too much information, visual “flotsam” that is selectively discarded by the human visual system. The rendition of colours can also appear “unnatural” in photographs because of issues with white balance, film types (in analog cameras), and sensors (digital cameras). 

A good example of how the human eye and camera lens perceive things differently is shown in the two photos above. The photograph on the right contains photographic perspective distortion (keystoning), where the tall buildings tend to “fall” or “lean” within the picture. The human eye (simulated on the left) on the other hand, corrects for this issue, and so does not perceive it.  To photograph a tall building, the camera is often tilted upward, and in position the vertical lines of the building converge toward the top of the picture. The convergence of vertical lines is a natural manifestation of perspective which we find acceptable in the horizontal plane (e.g. the convergence of railway tracks in the distance), but which seems unnatural in the vertical plane.

There are many other factors that influence the outcome of a picture. Some are associated with the physical abilities of a camera and its associated lenses, others the environment. For example the colour of ambient light (e.g. a colour cast created by the sun setting), perspective (the wider a lens the more distortion introduced), or contrast (e.g. B&W images becoming “flat”). While the camera does not lie, it rarely exactly reproduces the world as we see it. Or maybe we don’t perceive the world around us as it truly is.