Eye level

It’s been very cold lately hereabouts, with temperatures below 0F for the past five days, complete with 20 mph plus winds. This makes things very cold indeed, and sensible people spend their time indoors upon the advice of weathermen. Some people go stir crazy unable to get outside. As I was looking at the layout one morning, I got to thinking about viewpoints, and our perception of “realism” in our layouts. What follows is a rambling selection of thoughts brought on by being locked in the house for four days…

A selection of “eye levels”

It's a question that gets asked all the time on model railway forums. "What's the best height to display my model railway at?"

The easy answer to that is eye level. How you achieve eye level is up to you. Do you want to have eye level when you are sitting down or standing up? If you have a layout that is taken to shows, how do you achieve eye level for all the differing heights of people that will see it? Given that it's easier for a grown adult to squat down to get a good view, than it is for a parent to lift his child up to get a look at your layout, then you might want something a little lower than you personally would like. This is a subject that can quite often lead to extended discussions between modellers.

But there's another aspect about eye level that I have been mulling over. What is eye level? Exactly speaking it's (the centre of) the pupil of your eye. The light passes through the pupil onto the retina. Which is then converted into electrical impulses to the brain via the optic nerve, which processes the image,  So we have an exact height for your eye level. When you go to the optician to have your glasses fitted, they will locate the exact centre of your eye when measuring for bifocals for example. 

Now we often talk about getting down to eye level in our models. But how do you get down to eye level in the smaller scales? In 00/H0 scale your pupil can be, depending on the amount of light in front of you, around the size of a person. In N and Z your pupil will be bigger than the tiny folk that populate your layout. 

When you get to 0 scale then the head of a figure gets closer to the size of the pupil. Once you’re in the really large scales. In scales like 1:22.5, and 16mm, then your pupil size is closer to the size of a model persons face. In 7/8ths inch to the foot, a model persons head is larger than your pupil. That got me to thinking. Is this also a factor in how we perceive the realism in a model?

For example; many modellers talk about the increased realism in 0 scale, compared to 4mm scale. They say the increased mass of the models makes them appear more realistic. People will say that the realism i.e. “photorealism” has a lot to do with lighting and weathering, and I agree. But I think there’s a different realism.

Realism?

Take a look at this image from the early days of Bontoft’s for example. To me it feels realistic, even though the scene is photographed against a block wall, the scenery is basic, and the chute is unpainted. It feels like I’m there, and in the scene. I can perceive the relationship between the objects. 

How can this be realistic?

In this picture, one of the test scenes on the new layout, there’s almost nothing realistic, just the warehouse wall. But this is the scene that drives me to complete the model. I feel the realism is there. There is a relationship between the objects. When I get down into the model I can perceive these relationships, because the way my eye is processing the information in front of me is closer to reality than in a smaller scale. Things like depth of field and close focusing. Things we talk about in photographing our models we may forget when looking at a scene or model in real life because our eyes do it automatically. 

Anyway, this ramble is getting long and unwieldy and beyond my knowledge of the human visual system. But I think there’s something in it. Perhaps the optometrists, ophthalmologists and opticians amongst us can offer an opinion?