Field of view

A background area or an entire physical plane, often of one color and/or texture. Also, a sphere of activity, or a content, or a discourse. And, the area in which an image is rendered by the lens of an optical instrument; also called field of view, which can be any sort of shape and size. A wide field of vision might be panoramic, and a narrow one "long" or "telephoto," high and wide might be "fish-eye," "close-up," a "blow-up," or an "enlargement." Extremely narrow fields of view are routinely achieved with microscopes and telescopes. The latter include the sort of lenses used by satellites that make photographs of small areas of the earth's surface for military, scientific, and commercial purposes. A U.S. Navy Lieutenant, Joe Dalton, is credited with being the first, in 1998, to use a term for this extremely narrow field of view: the "soda-straw effect."In graphic design and computer terminology, a field is often a page, and if its orientation is vertical it is called portrait, and if horizontal it is called landscape.Also in computer terminology, a field is an element of a database record in which one piece of information is stored.Also see depth of field, field loss, heraldry, pan, panning shot, point of view, and tracking shot.