Turbines image accuracy questioned

Images commissioned by Meridian Energy to depict its proposed $2 billion Project Hayes wind farm make the turbines appear a third of their actual size, an Environment Court appeal hearing for the development heard yesterday.

Appellant Ewan Carr called photographer Mike Langford, of Queenstown, to give evidence about his opinion of TrueView images, which were prepared for the hearing by Truescape to show what the wind farm would look like.

Mr Langford said the images were compiled by combining wide-angle lens photographs of the site into a panorama, which greatly diminished any objects placed into those images at a distance beyond about 100m, such as the turbines which had been calculated into the landscape.

"The images are a series of wide-angle lens viewpoints stitched together to give us a feeling of the location. They do not in any form accurately communicate the turbines.

"Wide-angle lenses mostly tell you about where you are but not what you can see.

"Images in the distance appear diminished and closer features are bigger, therefore the TrueView simulations don't provide a correct interpretation of the subject matter at hand in terms of turbines, substations and roads," he said.

Mr Langford said the effect was compounded by combining wide-angle images into a panorama.

"In some of the TrueView images, I would say the turbines are diminished by as much as 300%," he said. Commissioner Alex Sutherland pointed out it was impossible for something to be diminished by 300%, and asked whether Mr Langford meant one third.

"When you diminish something by 100% it becomes nothing," Dr Sutherland said.

In clarification, Mr Langford said the turbines appeared to be one-third of their size, or three times smaller.

He also acknowledged he had not viewed the TrueView images at their full size, but instead viewed smaller copies of them.

Mr Langford said if commissioned as a professional, he would have made images depicting Project Hayes differently.

He said the TrueView images were "muddy" and "flat as a pancake" as a result of the light on days photographs were taken.

"I would have used a totally different lens, probably a 75mm lens as opposed to a 25mm wide-angle lens.

"When you use a lens between 70mm and 80mm you most accurately depict what the naked eye sees," he said.

Meridian counsel Humphrey Tapper asked Mr Langford whether he accepted the same view seen in a 25mm lens was seen in a 50mm lens.

Mr Langford said that was "optically" correct, but not mentally correct because the human brain subconsciously focused on things within immediate view and not peripheral view.

"In periphery vision you are aware things are there but you don't necessarily understand them or concentrate on them," he said.

During cross-examination by Mr Tapper, Mr Langford also acknowledged 50mm lenses were used as a standard in consent processes, and accepted such viewpoints had been used by hearing witnesses appearing for appellants of the Project Hayes wind farm, Gert van Maren and Anne Steven.