Change perspective in POV-Ray? (less convergence)

Question

Can you change the perspective in POV-Ray, so that convergence between parallel lines does not look so steep?

E.g. change this angle (the convergence of the checkered floor into the distance) here

To an angle like this

I want it to seem like you're looking at something nearby, so with a smaller angle of convergence in parallel lines.

To illustrate it more: instead of a view like this

Use a view like this

Answer 1

Move the camera backwards and zoom in (by making the angle smaller):

camera {
  perspective
  location <0,0,-15> // move this backwards
  sky   y
  up    y  
  angle 30 // make this smaller
  right (image_width/image_height)*x    
  look_at <0,0,0>
 }

You can go to the extreme by using an orthographic "camera":

camera {
  orthographic
  location <0,0,-15> // Move backwards, no matter how far
  sky   y
  up    y * h // where h = hight you want to cover
  right x * w // where w = width you want to cover
  look_at <0,0,0>
 }

The other extreme is the fish-eye lens.

Answer 2

You need to reduce the field of view of your camera's view frustum. The larger the field of view, the more stuff you're trying to squeeze into the output of your camera's render and so they parallel lines will converge faster. So in your first example with a cube, the camera will be more focused on the cube and the areas just immediately around it, than the whole environment.

The other option is to make your far plane much closer to your near plane, so you don't see many things that are far off. So in you first image example, you'll only see the first four or five grids instead.