[sleeping]

If parts be clearly focused and parts be not, that’s about all I’ll ever understand about doing bokeh.

Well, I think there is a definite difference between simply having an out of focus background:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/awrose/4894375236/in/set-625417

and using (well, attempting to, anyway, this one is not 100% successful) the out of focus elements in an image as part of the composition:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/awrose/4962388314/in/set-625417

I’m not saying the first one wouldn’t be fine to post in the contest, but I’m not sure it would stand out, particularly…

[sleeping]

your subject is sufficiently far from background to induce blur.

But in’t that basically the definition of shallow DOF? These things are relative to the subject you’re shooting – an inch of DOF is a lot in a macro photo, but not that much in a portrait etc…

[sleeping]

I sure hope that’s a Nikon lens at about the 17 second mark.

Nikon doesn’t use red rings…

[sleeping]

So, no clerics then?

[sleeping]

Are you shooting the textured surface at 1:1 magnification or so? It seems like you could maybe shoot some overexposed slides of textured surfaces and project images onto them. BW negatives (underexposed in that case) might work too….

[sleeping]

I’m willing to believe he got really lucky

I don’t think that’s the sort of shot you can luck into. I’m willing to believe there was a great deal of careful planning and a ton of patience involved though….

[sleeping]

I was looking at the birding one too. Something just doesn’t seem right about the photo.

it looks almost fake to me, but hey maybe his skills are just THAT good? What do I know?

It certainly could be fake, but that look could quite easily be caused by the bird being lit with a flash and the face not. It’s probably also a long lens back quite a way, compressing the apparent distance between the bird and guy.

[sleeping]

I was on something of a Beatles kick when I signed up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETO3YfDKEI4

[sleeping]

What about specialty filters and their effects?

Using a shaped aperture should be OK, but a soft focus filter or something along those lines would’t really count.

[sleeping]

Getting back to the Bokeh thing, here’s an example of how two different lenses at similar focal length, aperture, and distance can render the background very differently:

Sigma 15-30mm:

Nikon 18-35mm:

The background of the Sigma image is a lot smoother than the Nikon, which has quite a bit of texture/busy-ness to it.

If you look at the highlight circles in the Nikon image, you’ll see the edge of the circle is often brighter than the middle – that’s why the background isn’t as smooth. The ideal for a smooth background is an even circle or even to have the edges fade away from the middle.

[sleeping]

I’ve never been clear on what a point and shoot camera does internally with its optics to changet to focusing at macro/close-up distances

Depends on the camera. Some seem to be recombobulating their optics when you put them in macro mode (probably either moving the lens unit further from the sensor or shortening the focal length), but in a lot of cases it looks like it’s just removing a limit on the AF system (probably to allow faster focusing in normal mode).

[sleeping]

IMNSHO, people who argue that out of focus point light sources = Bokeh are mistaking the definition.

Bokeh is the way a lens renders out of focus elements in an image, and it’s primarily an attribute of a lens, not a photograph.

To be sure, the exact way a lens is behaving is definitely most easily seen/quantified when you have point light sources in the background, but that’s not at all the same thing as saying they are equal.

[sleeping]

The scratchpad defaults to showing things for a couple hours, but you can actually look back for three days using the menus there.

[sleeping]

See Canon users aren’t just the debbil, they’re also hipsters.

Does this mean we can hunt them for sport?

[sleeping]

NO offense intended, sleeping (or anyone else, FTM), these are just my thoughts on the matter.

Hey, they aren’t my files ;-). All I’m really saying is that you might want to consider this:

So long as I don’t impair them, they don’t care

In the context of them likely having oversold their actual storage capacity by several orders of magnitude.

[Author]

Posts