Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Understanding the Camera

Blender’s camera controls the view of your model that appears in the render. If you have experience with photography, most of the quirks of real-world cameras do not apply in Blender (which is fortunate in some ways, unfortunate in others). But one important characteristic does still apply, and that is field of view.

You can change the field of view in two ways--change the position of the camera, or change the angle of the lens. You do the latter in the Camera panel (Object Data), which appears in the header of the properties window when a camera is selected.

One fact worth noticing is that, good camera handling and positioning is vital to the overall render of your work. Excellent camera skills can result in outstanding images and animations. Knowing where to put your camera at what time and at what interval will greatly make you a good artist and an animation expert.

You can learn this art from our natural environment. 3D animations are a good start to help you understand some of the basic camera positioning. Its a pretty nice art and whether you are talented or not, you've got to develop it!

Remember, too, that too much of everything can be bad. The fact that you can move your camera to and fro without paying a penny does not grant you the permission to place your camera at wrong distances from your object of focus. Moving too far away from the object under consideration may also make it appear far too small. Position your camera well. To some extent, in Blender, WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get! On this I can bet. Trust me!

Here are two renders of the same scene with two different cameras, to illustrate the difference.

This one moves the camera closer but gives it a wider field of view:

This one moves the camera back, while narrowing its field of view.

The latter is like using a “telephoto” lens with a real camera. Notice how moving the camera closer gives you a greater perspective effect.