Playing with the depth of field, with a little help from Prince Charming in disguise
Froggy Hugs
35×35: Shallow
With a 35mm lens, how shallow the depth of field can be? Quite a bit!
PS: my first tree blossom of the year
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To the subway
Together with a good number of photographers from the “Asociația Bucureștiul meu drag”, I am part of the group exhibition that opened yesterday evening in one of the most active subway stations in Bucharest, Piața Unirii 1. The theme is our city and the pictures will stay there for all of you too see for a month and a half. Even from the first day many heads were turning.
I know I was expected to have a picture of me in front of my own creation, but so far I have no such photo, but I have something not bad either: a picture with a young couple finding the vicinity of my picture the proper place to kiss. That was one of my highlights of the event, as another was when another couple got close to my pictures, trying to identify one of the marathon runners, who may be their friend (but he was outside of the DOF).
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Sweet testing
Today I picked my lens (“the normalizer”, if you are curious which one) from the shop, where it was taken for calibration. The light at the shop was not good enough, so I postponed any serious testing for the following day, but on my way home I passed by this window, so I had to take a “test” (night shot, hand held camera, trough a glass window):
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Freedom?
So how do you see this barbed wire, as a representation of freedom or of the lack of it?
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I miss my lens
Yesterday I arrived home near the midnight, I was tired, with some beers in my system and not very optimistic, it was too much for a pretentious shoot: night, flashes, rain, water drops, improper lens so I postponed it until the morning.
The morning was not much better: it was still raining so the light was bad, the flowers in my garden still faded after a couple of torrid weeks, and most important, my preferred (zoom/macro) lens still missing – the lens is broken and I sent it to the repair shop, will miss it probably for a couple of weeks.
The first scenario I tried was the (prime) 50mm lens with a macro extension ring, the smallest ring in my set – I had to go a little closer than wanted:
The second scenario was the wide lens, 19-35, at the maximum zoom and widest aperture and then a crop around the subject – the DOF was too large, the flower not separated enough from its leaves.
As a conclusion, I was not happy with either, still selected the macro. I miss my lens!
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Field of flowers
Maybe this could have used a larger depth of field
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Mmmm…. chocolate… and raspberries…
Tried to remake an older shot, from about a year ago, but there are some differences: the chocolate is weaker (Heidi Dark versus an almighty Lindt) but the fruits are more interesting, both as color and taste (raspberries versus strawberries). What would you take?
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Blue chicory
Some time ago I set myself the target to try shooting a chicory flower as best an I can so a few days ago in the morning, I saw from the windows of the tram a chicory bush on the side of the road. It was to late to try something that day, and in the evening when returning was already too dark. The next day I was in a rush, so skipped again, but the third day I finally took the shoot: left the home earlier, walked instead of using the tram and enjoyed the photoshot:
Update: the high resolution of the photo(s) here were lost in an unfortunate accident(human error made by be) and a bit later the only copy remaining (resized for web use, hosted on flickr) was deleted by the yahoo bastards. I am very sad about the lost content, but is out of my control. My only hope is I will be able to replace them with more and better shots.
I got the opportunity to remake this shot.
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Poppy head
Lately I tried a few shoots of poppy flowers, but yesterday morning I had the opportunity for a composition about this. Made just in front of my house, early in the morning when leaving for work.
Update: the high resolution of the photo(s) here were lost in an unfortunate accident(human error made by be) and a bit later the only copy remaining (resized for web use, hosted on flickr) was deleted by the yahoo bastards. I am very sad about the lost content, but is out of my control. My only hope is I will be able to replace them with more and better shots.
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Willow
Among other trees and flowers, the willows are blossoming to, making the walk near a lake into a beautiful experience.
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Buds
We are into the astronomic spring already, the bulbs (like this magnolia from my garden) are ready to explode, they need probably one or more hot sunny days, not the cloudy today. But there is a good thing to that: I have not managed to uplaod al ths shots from yesterday in the park…
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Spring yellow flowers
I could use some help from my readers, even if those flowers, probably the first trees blossoming in the spring, are practically everywhere, including in my garden, where I took the shoot, I don’t know their name, not the Romanian name and not the English name.
Update: thanks to a comment on flickr, I learned the name: "Forsythia" in English respectively "Forsiția" in Romanian
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Waiting to blossom
I hate this ugly and cold weather: the vegetation is waiting to blossom, look at this tree from my garden, and is held back by the low temperatures… But I guess there is also an upside for this: I have in my mind some spring photos for which I lack the means to take at the moment (but the situation does not appear to be changing in the following weeks, so is not much of an upside).
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Close-ups and Depth of Field
I tried some close-ups with various parameters for the shot and found myself unable to definitely chose what I like better: a wide or shallow depth of field, for each of them I can see pluses and minuses, so I turned out to some external opinions.
Unanimously, the non-photographers (and a photographer interested mostly in portraits), opted wor a wide DOF, and I can understand why, the "more is more" doctrine, the picture shows more things, wich many people consider a good thing:
Still not convinced, I turned to past colleagues from the photography course Cursphoton, and I found voices opting for the shallow DOF, or what I like to call in this case "less is more":
I find the difference interesting and telling, but obviously the definitive question is still "who is the target for the photos?" and this may tell you which option to prefer…
And of course I tried another version of the photo: dark background and an intermediary aperture value, it tells a completely different story:
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