spring2life take2

My preference for shallow depth of field is well known, but of course it is not suitable for each and every subject. Since some time I am experimenting with means to transport the specific way in which the camera records to the viewer. Shallow depth of field is, as well as bokeh,  a concept unknown in human seeing with the naked eye, as we are constantly accomodating and combining the images of the different focal planes in our visual conception. Combining two such images in a kind of diptychon is – for me – a promising way of enhancing the visual experience.

I hope a grey day in Salzburg, with a subject photographed probably a gazillion times, is a suitable example for this approach. Oh yes, and don’t forget to click on the image to view it large.

Bad Reichenhall, Old Spa Center with concert hall. 42mme and f2.2 are sufficient to blur the background.

The human, understandable reaction answer to the fading colors of our natural surroundings are, what else, more colors. The Christmas bauble and the reflection of the raindrops play nicely with the artificial light, only the blue LED’s, replacing the small Edison-type bulbs on many trees, can get enervating because of their overly bright and cold characteristics. And while we do not suffer from the really short days Juhaa is reporting here, on overcast and rainy days there is a substantial lack of brightness. *That* makes me long for snow – it becomes brighter then – and the sudden quietness, when the freshly fallen snow dampens all the sounds.

I still can’t get enough of my 85mm lens – after years with zooms in the f3.5 upwards speed class, beeing able to sharply differentiate by focus and to include informative background without letting it get too prominent is a welcome experience. And it leaves me wondering why lenses like this have become so rare and consequently expensive, if available at all. In the good old film days, when the Mamas and Papas sang “All the leaves are brown”, those f1,8, f1.4 50mm lenses became popular – and cheap. They were the bread and butter lenses, and some of them were of outstanding optical quality. For the DSLRs building a f1.4 50mm lens should not have become more difficult, on the contrary: the smaller image area for an APS-C sensor should have made it possible to produce smaller and cheaper lenses with the same quality. But instead the zoom fever set in, and part of the high-iso discussion we see now, is fired by the low speed of the lenses.

And fast primes, if we can get them, sell for mid- to really high prices. Only for those brands that did not see major changes in the lens mount, the 2nd hand market offers alternatives.

Today’s flat light didn’t bring much inspiration. So I went out only when daylight was fading already and I could expect the street lights to be switched on soon. Their bokeh gave the twist I was looking for to these old, dried efflorescences.

In her comment to Warm yellow, Martina asked: “what is it with bokeh that is so nice?”. My gut-felt preference for those airy disks and blur would not make up for a good answer. But considering the special techniques photography has, and their difference our human vision perceives a field of view, I think both items, airy disks and blur, make a big difference. When the eyes scan a scenery, focusing to the different planes happens very quick and usually without a decision, so these artifacts will be eliminated usually before they reach conscious recognition. The only situations where they might get recognized by the eye are stress or overload situations: reflections of lights on a rainy windscreen at night, glistening sunlight on a rippled water surface: Then for a moment those artifacts will stay as the eye simply does not find focused and therefore prioritized items to replace them with.

But for my photography, the gut feeling of course remains the decisive factor.

Maybe I am overdoing it with my faible for low DoF, but then I find the autumn leaves in that context really wonderful – beauty not in a grain of sand but in a single leaf, alone or against just the idea of a background, blurred to an extend where the colors only signal the wonders of an autumnal forest.

That wonderglass I unwrapped yesterday of course stayed on the camera for quite some time – to be honest, it still stays. I was longing such a long time for that shallow DoF that I guess it will take some time until that deprivation is compensated for. I was using zoom lenses almost exclusively for the last 4 years, and of course for recording of events they do have their merits. But I was astonished how fast I got accustomed to that ‘framing with the feet’, and the fixed focal length is no hindrance, at least for the photography I am doing at the moment.

Pixel-peeping (of course you do that, as you can do it so easily in digital photography) I found some CA, but to be honest, I couldn’t care less. It is not too difficult to correct, but even uncorrected probably barely visible, and then I won’t do reproductions or architecture photography with emphasis on ultimate sharpness with this lens. It’s for (soft) moods, I think, and these it can capture in nonpareil style.

Just a remark on that image of the red maple: I barely was able to rescue it as the reds were clipped in quite some areas. Bibble5 highlight recovery did a good job, but still I’ll try to capture this again when light and winds permit.

Today I finally held in my hand what I was looking for since re-starting photography: A probably 15 years old second hand Minolta 1.4/85mm lens. Aah – that were the times when all lenses were built completely from metal. That definitely gives a solid feeling! And then that front lens, what an amount of glass! But I didn’t bother for long with admiring the outer qualities, instead I used my lunch break for a walk in the nearest park. That shallow DoF and blurry background is amazing (the shot above was taken stopped down half a f-stop) but what was demanding at least for the first frames is the discrepancy between the viewfinder image and what gets recorded on the sensor: In the viewfinder you simply do not see that shallow DoF and background blur or bokeh. The reason is the “optimisation” of the former ground glass into an array of micro-structures that are much brighter than any groundglass could be, but similarly to a loupe offers a virtual image to the eye. And this image does not obey to even only widely similar optical laws of the rendering on a groundglass. Well, without that artifice the viewfinder would be unbearably dark with the zoom lenses that are the standard now.

I am a happy camper for now, as this lens allows me to bask in low DoF images and, as I hope, those wonderful airy discs of out-of-focus light sources. Additionally I will try those fine portraits where only the pupils are rendered sharply but already nose and ears get enwrapped in soft and flattering unsharpness.

I’ve always been interested in reflections and the corresponding circles of confusion that the backlight brings out so strongly. But photographing for decades, up to now I had never deliberately misfocused – sharpness for a long time was like a holy cow for me, as I see it as one of the genuine characteristics of photography to render the scene sharp and full of details. This small creek I found 2 weeks back during our hike in the Berchtesgaden national park, and the quality of the autumn light I found transported best in this blurred rendering of the scene.

This image is probably more conventional, and it was easy for me to accept. Backlight is the light I cherish the most since decades, however it eluded me often back in the film days. Chimping has improved my skills in dealing with this light form very much, and now I find more time to deal with the colours in this light situation.

After a greyish morning the weather became really fine in the afternoon, with warm and slightly golden sunlight, a fine match for the leaves that have not yet started their descent from summer’s green into autumn yellow and brown.

In the city, where the temperatures yet don’t become really low at night, the geranium plants in the flower flower boxes still show their full colors. Geranium are traditional adornment for the houses here in Bavaria. They require however daily care in form of removing the old leaves and dry blossoms, otherwise the start to degrade only too fast, blaming their owners as careless.

Westend again. Some of last weeks images (Westend Strip Light, City Life) originate from there, and the streets are always worth a deviation from the shortest way to work. Today I indulged in my bokeh passion again, this time with the long zoom on the camera. A conscious decision for a certain lens influences my way of seeing, and while I was a fan of very long tele lenses earlier, this passion has somewhat subsided. But in this image I see a good combination of sharp detail and blurred shapes of the street and its inventory, f5.6 seemed to have been just right.

these images, created while commuting in the rain, might have also fit martin storz’ always-take-the-weather project on his blog ‘the public eye’, but i decided to show them here as part of my bokeh mini-series. and for martin i will try to create a sunny weather image, given that we get such a thing in the next days.

for me these airy disks are something genuinely photographic, along with shallow dof, which can not be reasonably reproduced in painting or other arts and crafts. maybe this is the reason why i get so fascinated by those two phenomena.

and as always: click on the images to see them large in a javascript lightbox.

since i bought my first dslr in 2005 i am lusting for a 1.4/85mm lens just to indulge in my passion for shallow dof and fine bokeh. for the minolta a-mount, taken over by sony without modifications, this lens is available in zeiss brand for a zeiss price and used in a variety of minolta makes for less then half the price, but still hefty. just recently i’ve got permission from my departement of finances, but since then not a single reasonable priced specimen showed up on *bay. the strange thing now is that am not too shure anymore that i really need it. and i learned to get my airy discs by using the existing lenses, which means that i do not have to carry an additional piece of glass, which is not too bad either.

the quality of the viewfinder was *the+ critical argument for my first dslr – wearing glasses, a high eyepoint makes a big difference. but even the good finder of my current camera didn’t show me recognizably what this shot would look like later on – the blurs of color, dabbed over the background like from an impressionist painter I did simply not see in the viewfinder. the bokeh of my tele zoom, focused at 450 mm-e on the background, created the most awesome stipples out of the cherry blossoms and some foreground leafs. and once more i was glad about my decision to *always* shoot raw: whilst the original showed a slight purple cast in the background, resulting from the low sun peering through dark clouds, bibble and especially the brenda plugin helped me to form an image that met my memory of the light situation. again – no saturation slider touched, no ‘vibrance’ added.

two days before i had tried the same scenery with the focus on the cherry blossoms. the result wasn’t nearly as good as there was no clear separation between what’s sharp and what should be unsharp, with a resulting not-really-sharp impression and lacking emphasize on what i meant to be singled out.

now i am content with the result.

ok, april is the month for fast changing weather conditions. not yet april? don’t mind, let’s just enjoy the sun.

i was waiting quite a while for good, warm october weather – we had to have it now, especially as an economic factor for the benefits of the octoberfest and the poor landlords there, who are always on the brink of bankruptcy if there is not a new record in the number of sold hectolitres of beer.

so we had our fine weather and the kids took advantage of it to make flower necklaces of the very last daisies, and i took advantage of this to exercise my venerable 20+ years old 1.7/50mm lens – i am a shallow depth of field freak, i have to admit.

the first time i made really use of the blue hour and the my old zoom. focused to close distance, wide open, the bokeh really becomes great. which is no wonder at the other hand as there are no diaphragm blades involved. again, anti-shake saved my day as handholding 320mm effective focal length at 1/20s shutter speed is next to impossible, even when leaning to a lamp post. iso 1600 as a usable sensor speed is a value in itself (as is auto-iso, when you are in a hurry), though i have to admit that with other subjects the grain is below the optimum.

it took some time, but it seems that i grow more and more accustomed to my camera and can detach myself from technique and concentrate more and more on seeing. and in the end, *this* is it what really matters.

i confess, i confess, i confess: i too am guilty of the inevitable spring flower macros, encroaching the photographic websites from all directions now. ok, flickr has always high times for flower shots, and a lot of people turn up their nose on this. but even andreas manessinger already found himself seduced by flowers again… mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

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so what: only rarely i have found such pure colors, such unity of form and color, and such photogenic qualities helping my vision and craftsmanship to overcome pure reproduction and turn into feeling, sensing.

so i confess being guilty. but i don’t mind.