Top myths in photography

Neither I nor the article I linked to suggested that focal length determined viewing distance, quite the opposite, in fact. Picture size, more than anything else, is what was found to determine the viewing distance, and the fact that picture size rather than focal length determines the preferred viewing distance is part of the reason, the research article concluded, that photographers can make a scene look compressed or expanded in depth by using different focal length lenses. It is true that by cropping and pano-stitching you can make a given focal length present an angle of view other than what it was intended to do, but I hardly see that as a valid argument against the conclusions reached by the research.