Agreed. But one must also appreciate that different people learn in different ways - eg. Youtube videos are useless for me, I'd rather read about a subject. Some others are the opposite
I've gone back and read this thread and I appreciate both Michael's and your styles. I think there is room for both and I would trust the reader to concentrate on the style that suits them best
I guess I had misunderstood (my fault) your earlier posts - you're basically saying "this is a slightly simplified version and we can go into further detail once you've mastered this". That's fine. What I think causes confusion for beginners is when someone states a falshood and then will not back down on it - arguing with anyone who tries to correct them. This is not what you are doing. Apologies for getting the wrong end of the stick
Add me as another vote for saying that simplified is fine, but incorrect information is bad. Basic principles are not that complicated. There's entirely too many posts to the effect that high ISO is the cause of noise, ISO is amplification, exposure triangle and the like. Practical advice, such as set shutter speed for blur, f-stop for DOF, get most light on sensor consistent with that, don't worry about ISO, seems rather simple and fine for beginners. It doesn't seem any more complicated than wrong information.
Perspective is a consequence of distance is not a complicated thing to understand. Once people understand that, then you can talk about how varying the focal length varies the cropping of the scene. Then you can introduce the concept of viewing distance, which most people ignore when discussing perspective. It's not useful or necessary to introduce fiction into teaching.
That's a typical example of terrible teaching. I'm sure we've all experience something like it (although not many primary school children teach themselves negative numbers, I'm sure :-) ). You sometimes see this in automated teaching systems too (like those used by Brilliant). Sometimes the authors forget there might be an alternative answer and the software is too stupid to accept it.
I find it interesting reading my daughter's GCSE maths materials. For example, they introduce the idea that a square root can be negative and that numbers have two square roots right at the beginning of teaching roots. That did not happen in my school days. Teaching itself is a process that is being improved over time.
I have no evidence to say that teaching perspective is controlled by focal length rather than distance is a deliberate fiction. I'm inclined to believe it is more a form of rain dancing invented by photographers themselves from experience and passed on to the next generation. Eventually it is accepted by the majority because they've heard it said over and over and because it appears to correspond with experience. I mean, when you look through a wide lens people do get bigger noses. Just look and see. The fact that they've confused the cause is a mistake, but somehow it doesn't seem to be a hindrance to getting the photo you want. It sort of works. Which is probably why it propagates so well. I once got into a heated debate on DPR with someone who wouldn't accept it's distance not focal length that causes big noses. I even went out and shot a portrait with an ultra wide at 60 feet distance, cropped out the subject's face and posted it to prove it, and he still wouldn't accept it. At one point, I thought he was getting so angry he was going to burn down my house in a fit of rage. People really don't like learning they are wrong. Some people, anyway. I don't like it either, but I can usually get over it once I've had time to calm down. Making and correcting mistakes is a great learning aid.
I see you have already made a locally pinned post in 'Answers to common questions' with a current state of content. I'd suggest adding there some text as to what it is intended to be.
I'm not exactly clear what is meant by "entrance pupil" but when I was 13 I was taught that f numbers are calculated by dividing the focal length by the diameter of the front element. If the front element is not the entrance pupil then that lesson taught me something that is incorrect. In this case, the incorrectness doesn't seem to have had any practical consequences for me knowing how to take a picture. Teaching successfully has a lot to do with knowing your audience. If you understand your audience you can usually tailor what you teach to their practical needs - which sometimes are not about become a master of a craft or a world class expert in the subject. Sometimes, good enough really is good enough. I think it can be a mistake to think that the choice is between 100% correctness or nothing at all.
Necessary? Probably not. But most people learn far more readily from hearing stories or analogies to things they are already familiar with rather than being presented with abstract dry facts and equations. Popular science books are probably a terrible substitute for text books, but they tell stories that introduce lay people to hard concepts and get them interested and enthused in a way the text book is unlikely to do. Audiences and intent are important factors in decisions about how to present material.
The way to find out what works is to present enough people with alternative presentations and ask them what works for them.
I think you are making my point about how hard it is to unlearn something. I may have used the wrong word when I said fiction. I didn't mean that it was necessarily deliberate. So now the question becomes, is the photographer better off learning that perspective is a function of focal length or learning the truth? I guess it depends on how far the photographer wants to go with their photography. It certainly is a financial problem for people buying cameras with 645 sensors to get the perspective they want.
On that question, it might not matter so much because by accident, the false explanation works nearly as well as the correct explanation for most people. And that is all they care about. I'd like to think that people who go to the expense and trouble of larger formats are also more inclined to take the trouble to find out how things really work. But I take your point and it is cleverly selected too.
I'd like to believe in this example that it isn't a case of people being misled by teachers, rather it's photographers come to the wrong conclusion by themselves then pass it on to others. Unfortunate.
There's a very good demo of perspective done by Darwin Wigget petapixel.com/2016/06/09/use-zoom-lens-tell-story/ using video, a zoom lens, a house and a large dog. Somehow the message is more convincing when you see the perspective changing in real time. Even though he sometimes muddles his voiceover explanation.
From my experience, that does not appear to be the case. Among MF photographers, there is often belief in magical properties of the format (in color, perspective, 3D pop, etc), and, sad to say, magical properties of CCD sensors. And don't get me started on the fictions (this time I mean deliberate, since those companies have smart engineers who could tell the marketing folks the truth) introduced by P1 and Hasselblad over the years.
I think I sort of understand the accidental myths. Medium format digital was 10x to 100x more expensive than most photographers would ever spend. Much like owning a Leica or old style Hassie, these products were aspirational dreams unlikely to ever be experienced personally. So it's easy to believe the myths must be true. Similar to enduring beliefs in high end audio. It cost 50k, it must be better, while the reality is often the complete opposite. Much high end gear is much worse than mass market cheap stuff with a lot of expensive but poor engineering. The CCD thing was true once, when cmos sensors were in their infancy and only suitable for doorbell cams. There is at least some sort of reason for believing CCD is better even if that belief has been obsoleted by the passage of time. And of course, people do like to revel in the idea that they are a member of an exclusive club that knows the real truth unlike like the rest of the sheeple. The miniformat medium format magic myth is odder though. I mean you can shoot a 35mm crop in many MF cameras. How come the magic disappears because of a small crop?
