No matter where I move light, it only shines on center

Question

Ive been using blender for a few years and have never had this problem before. No matter where I move the light, it only shines on the center of the image in render. I have an image with 4 spotlights that in the "viewport shading" view, the lights are fine and in the right spot.

But when I go to camera view or render the image, all the lights point at the center.

If I move the lights, they will move but only slightly. I have to move them multiple times farther to see any movement. Its like they are locked on the center.

I even tried opening up a new blender file and pasting the mesh to it and the same problem happens.

I have never had this happen before and Ive looked every where to find a solution. Can someone PLEASE tell me why its doing this?

Answer 1

Your viewport is set to Orthographic, and your camera is Perspective.

Here, we're looking at a sample of the reflected light-rays, ones that happen to be straight up. But the principle applies to the cone of all the others.

In an orthographic view-space, these reflected rays aim directly at the view-plane:

In a perspective view-space, the central rays are still straight to the view-plane, but the rays towards the periphery are lost to it:

.. so the reflected light is more centrally concentrated.

Here's what happens, in a track-and-zoom:

.. as we back off. and zoom in, (approaching an orthographic view), the light from the whole surface is reflected more directly into the camera.