Several news sources, including Kitsilano.ca, have been critical of Vancouverites for overcrowding local parks and ignoring physical distancing.
According to local landscape architecture firm space2place, it is not as bad as it looks.
Space2place tweeted a series of photos of this weekend’s Kits Beach crowd that demonstrates how much of a difference a telephoto lens can make. A telephoto lens creates an optical illusion compressing the background with the foreground, making the image look more densely packed than the reality.
Check out the following photos and their focal length to see the difference.
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- 35mm
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- 70mm
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- 200mm
According to Space2place, theses photo were taken at Kits Beach on May 11, 2020 at 6pm.
With a focal length of 200mm (a telephoto lens), the beach looks densely packed but at a focal length of 70mm, it only looks busy.
Using a 35mm focal length, which closely approximates what we see with the human eye, you can see that there’s generous space around the small groups of people.
Even more telling is the perspective from above – while there are a few groups larger than they should be, for the most part people are social distancing.
This video captures another view of the scene this evening at Kits Beach. 7/ pic.twitter.com/DED7eYbSKx
— space2place (@space2place) May 11, 2020
Last modified: May 12, 2020
Thanks for giving a balanced perspective on the physical distancing issues. At first glance it may look like everyone is flouting the rules and putting others at risk. On closer inspection, the vast majority of people are respectful of the distancing, and this is why we have been so successful at keeping the number of cases so low. We don’t want to let up too much, too soon.