Posts Tagged ‘DoF’
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
In these not so bright days and with strictly limited daylight time budget for photography, the nearby parks and gardens are a natural choice. Using my primes at wide open f-stops, I always have to translate the image during framing as the viewfinder does not at all show the abstract patterns that get recorded by the sensor. What was first astonishing and then annoying me, has now become a nice exercise in visualizing beyond the image in the viefinder.
And sometimes the pattern of the plant repeats in the flow of the background lines. No, I did not see this before, but I was even happier when discovering it.
Tags:Bad Reichenhall, blur, bokeh, detail, DoF, park, plant, shallow DoF
Posted in dahoam (at home), nature | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 6th, 2009
My hometown accomodates a huge number of guests during the summer, but now things get more and more quiet: the fountains are covered, chairs moved out of the pedestrian area, an icecream parlour is changed into a lebkuchen sales point. Luckily enough christmas decoration is almost non-existing yet, but that’s probably a grace period to be measured in days only.
Tags:chair, DoF, green, shadow, table
Posted in dahoam (at home) | 8 Comments »
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
The locomotive driver probably did not share my adventurous feelings regarding a trip to Rome – and I guess he had to go up to the border to Austria only anyhow. Different perspectives everywhere, and differentiate I did also (again) with a big f-stop, and afterwards in postprocessing by working on that cold-warm contrast as well.
From the number of keepers within that week that I own this lens now it seems that this purchase was a good decision. That (slow zoom lens induced) lack of shallow DoF is the only drawback I see at the moment with my APS-C format camera. But with the right prime it is not an issue any more. That I get high shutter speeds even in the darker times of the day is another benefit, albeit a smaller one when taking that great high-iso performance of the current camera generation into account. Oh – I have to say yesterday’s camera generation, as my model is already 2 years old – an eon in today’s camera makers fast development rhythm.
Tags:bokeh, DoF, Hauptbahnhof, münchen, munich, rain, station, train
Posted in urban | No Comments »
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
To avert the impression that my new lens had made me forget how to use a smaller f-stop like 1/5.6 here are three images from a road construction machine. Here I sometimes missed the universality of my zoom, but this restriction of course provoked more flexibility. And I am still asking myself why I didn’t make more use of my 50mm lens, similarly fast. It could be that I am somewhat drawn to the extremes in focal lengths, either really short or much longer than normal. The 50mm I tried for portraits, but this focal length distorts the proportions of the face when you try a tighter framing.
Ok, and an image with wide open f-stop at last – I simply couldn’t help it.
Tags:bokeh, construction, detail, DoF, low DoF, machine, parts, red
Posted in urban | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
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.
Tags:85mm, background, blur, bokeh, depth of field, DoF, garden, leaf, lens lust, minolta
Posted in bokeh, nature | 8 Comments »
In these not so bright days and with strictly limited daylight time budget for photography, the nearby parks and gardens are a natural choice. Using my primes at wide open f-stops, I always have to translate the image during framing as the viewfinder does not at all show the abstract patterns that get recorded by the sensor. What was first astonishing and then annoying me, has now become a nice exercise in visualizing beyond the image in the viefinder.
