> I think one loses a bit of the overall impact of a picture when viewed > with a 40x microscope.
<g> I'm glad somebody said that. > How much difference can be seen in a 8x10 print, > viewed from 18" , with 20/20 vision? People just can't see more than 6-8 > lp/mm at 18". They certainly don't see much at all when they look at a > picture in a magazine for 3 seconds. I used to have part of a slide lecture where I would show students a series of pictures. I would leave the slides up for a good long time, 30 seconds or a minute, and ask them to look at the picture carefully. Then I'd take it down and ask them if they had seen the X [some object they would invariably miss]. My favorite was a Mark Klett picture called "Man Behind Creosote Bush." It was a 4x5 Polaroid Type 55 print of a spindly bush with a man standing right behind it. He's fully visible, and takes up most of the frame, but camouflaged by the bush. Invariably, most of the kids would miss the man until I pointed him out. It was fun--I'd say, "so did you see the man standing there?" and they'd all go, "Get outta here! There was no man in that picture!" and "He must have been tiny!" Then I'd show them the slide again. The purpose of the exercise was to prove to them how quickly we assume that we "get" all the contents of pictures, without really _looking_. --Mike
