Lost light information

[SinJin]

I don't know too much about optics. I know that when you see something, for instance a friends face, photons are bouncing off the face and into your eyes, where ultimately your brain interprets the information they carry. So if you're standing right infront of this friend, you can see detail in his face - a mole on his cheek, crease lines on his forhead, etc. And all that information is encoded in the photons that are bouncing off him and to your eyes, right? Well when the friend moves back, say 50 feet, you can still see him, but the details become fuzzy. No longer can you see the crease lines or the mole or anything else too small to make out. My question is what happens to those details? Photons are still bouncing off those creases and that mole, so how come they are getting lost on their way to your eyes?

[mkirkpatrick]

I don't know too much about optics. I know that when you see something, for instance a friends face, photons are bouncing off the face and into your eyes, where ultimately your brain interprets the information they carry. So if you're standing right infront of this friend, you can see detail in his face - a mole on his cheek, crease lines on his forhead, etc. And all that information is encoded in the photons that are bouncing off him and to your eyes, right? Well when the friend moves back, say 50 feet, you can still see him, but the details become fuzzy. No longer can you see the crease lines or the mole or anything else too small to make out. My question is what happens to those details? Photons are still bouncing off those creases and that mole, so how come they are getting lost on their way to your eyes?

Nothing happens to those details at all,it is just that your eyesight is lacking the abilty to refocus and ajust itself to enable the image to stay crystal clear,to stay sharp,stay close.

regards michael