Hi, I’m a graduate student studying camouflage strategies on lizards in Taiwan. I want to use peafowl to stimulate the predator’s vision and use the LEIA (col.cov and lum.cov) to quantify the concealment of different color morphs of lizards in the grassland habitat.
But I’m now confused about deciding the shooting distance when using the Acuityview function. Because different shooting distances will affect the information detail that is contented in the photo, and the Acuityview transformation is based on the Raw photo information, the shooting distance will definitely affect the result of the Acuityview transformation. Therefore, I’m troubled by whether I should shoot at a closer distance to maximize the detail on lizards or take photos from a longer distance to catch more information from the background substrate.
To be more specific, I wonder if the shooting distance will affect, and how it will influence, the ecological meaning of the results obtained from the AcuityView simulation.
best wishes
Hao-Sen Chen
Heya,
The resolution of most animal visual systems is well below that of a camera, and thus, the image will always be downsampled (never up). The images you take should reflect the background you are interested in when making your analysis. This is precisely why using the size standard is important, as it allows scaling the image independent of the distance the camera had to the subject.
Cheers,
Cedric