>It seems that if you are standing at a certain spot and want to fill the >frame with the subject, you'd use the zoom feature to do so. But, is the >perspective the same as if you used a shorter focal length prime lens and >moved closer to the subject, assuming that in both cases the subject fills >the frame to the same degree.
No. Perspective is a function of distance alone. Moving your position with a prime lens changes the perspective. Zooming from a fixed position leaves the perspective the same and just changes the field of view. >Zooms (from my limited experience) seem to have more distortion at the >wider and longer ends of their focal range compared to primes of a similar >focal length. Is that a generally fair statement? Yes. But that doesn't mean that it's always significant. Godfrey
