“What the camera lens saw”

(A key ingredient of trusted photographs)

This term alludes to the camera lens as a substitute for what a person would have seen had they been in exactly the same place as the camera and lens.

Cameras see differently than humans see

The lens is somewhat analogous to the human eye and the camera is somewhat analogous to the human brain, but the comparison is not an exact one.

No photograph can show exactly “what the camera lens saw” the way a human would see a real-world scene, because cameras record things differently than does the human brain.

TTG naturally takes these differences into account, as does every news organization in the world.

That is why when checking a photo's fitness for TTG “what the camera lens saw” — like many other things on this website — is defined by rinairs and not by individual photographers.

Do TTG photographs reflect “what the photographer saw” or “what the camera recorded”? See #421.