They're saying that it is not a property of the lens, but rather of the perspective of the scene viewed from a distance. You'd get the same effect using any focal length lens, taking the shot from the same location, and cropping appropriately.
Perhaps in contrast to depth of field which is a property of the lens.
The photographer had to move quite a bit further back to get the subject to be the same size in the frame at 150mm as the subject was at 35mm.
They could have used the 35mm lens at the same distance as the 150mm lens and simply cropped and the perspective compression would be the same (it'd just be a lower resolution image).
> effect a telephoto has
They're saying that it is not a property of the lens, but rather of the perspective of the scene viewed from a distance. You'd get the same effect using any focal length lens, taking the shot from the same location, and cropping appropriately.
Perhaps in contrast to depth of field which is a property of the lens.