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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The rule of thumb...

...is 1"/1'.  For me, anyway.  Basically, it's the parallax between your eyes, using the thumb as a focal point.  How much the object jumps between closing my right eye to my left eye translates to how far away an object is.  It's actually kinda accurate.  I've tested it at 10ft, 30ft, and 100ft.  It's quick and easy, too.

 

by @

3 comments:

  1. Patti D.February 22, 2011 at 8:36 AM

    Explain how it works!! I'm very interested now.

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  2. TastyFebruary 22, 2011 at 2:16 PM

    Wow this is so incredibly useful dude. Thank you man. This is one of those things you'd never think to look up because you don't know the name of it, but when you find out it's like "omg yes. I <3 knowledge."

    ReplyDelete
  3. [Satans_Taco]February 22, 2011 at 5:56 PM

    Basically, you gauge the distance that your thumb jumps.

    Let's say you want to know how far away you are from a streetlight. Hold your arm straight out and your thumb straight up. Close one eye and position the middle of your thumb over the post. Now, close your eye and open the other one. See where your thumb jumps to, let's say... to a spot on the road next to it.

    The distance from the streetlight to the other spot is what you want to measure in inches. So, let's say you guess that it jumped to a spot that's like about 2 feet away. That's 24 inches. That 24 inches tells you that you're about 24 feet away from the sign.

    For longer distances, it's easier to imagine yourself over at the two places your thumb is covering. For example, I lined up the side of my neighbor's house to a spot next to a tree on their side yard. I imagined myself taking 3 big strides from the side of their house to that tree. I know that a stride is about a yard, which is 3ft, or 36 inches. So, 3 strides is 3 yards, or about 108 inches. That means I was about 108ft. from the side of his house. I then went back inside and got on google maps and then went to the satellite view and measured the distance using the map's scale from where I was standing to the side of his house and it was about 30meters, or about 100 feet.

    This is all about quick and dirty measurements, but it'll really give you a good sense of how far things are away from you.

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