07-02-08 – Mmmm Bokeh

And my cats haven’t liked my attempts to make a picture for this theme.

This is pretty shallow

I would say that is quite shallow, what, an inch or 2?

That looks like a railroad rail, so it looks to me like the in-focus area is about 1/2″-1/4″ deep, or less.

I’m kicking around using a few of my older shots…

that last one does a nice job of showing the bokeh of your lens.

The first one is closer, but both of them have quite a bit in focus.

I think the problem is that your subject isn’t isolated enough. All the grass around the main subject keeps it from being isolated from the rest of the image, which is the classic way to get good bokeh.

The easiest way to get lots of out of focus area is to have something suspended or hanging or otherwise by itself in the frame, and have as little as possible besides the main subject in the frame. The further the background is from the subject, the more out of focus it will be. Say if you have a flower growing in the yard and you shoot it against some taller plants directly behind it, not a lot is going to be out of focus. If you reposition the same shot where it’s empty space behind the flower all the way to the fence on the other side of the yard, the flower is really going to stand out. Since you’re using a digicam, you’re not going to be able to get the really narrow depth of field that people using SLRs with fast lenses are going to be able to achieve. Use the macro setting for small objects, or a long zoom placed further away from the object for a larger object. Have your f-stop be as small a value as possible for reducing the depth of field. Killerclaw’s last photo above is an excellent example of highlighting the bokeh of a lens. Those out-of-focus globes of light are what you’re trying to maximize.

This photo has bokeh:

while this photo, shot with the same settings more or less, but different lighting, wouldn’t be said to have good bokeh, because of the lighting.

does that help any?

Aw shucks, thanks! Good to know i’m on the right track!

Thanks again.

with all due respect to red-x’s i’m moving my fartography pix to a different album. so here’s the first pic that moderator said meant i was on the right track

http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g63/katkendig/farktography/?action=view&current=0806260002k.jpg

and here’s the deleted post…

I thought this one was okay, though not as good as the first one i posted

http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g63/katkendig/farktography/?action=view&current=0806260003k-1.jpg

But I like spidey here better, though he’s a little hard to see…

http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g63/katkendig/farktography/?action=view&current=0806260018k.jpg

hopefully that all worked. what a PITA.