rxmd
May contain traces of nut
I'd say the danger has been there for a while - we've seen so many shallow DOF shots that nowadays they've become rather boring, somewhat like HDR, or like fisheye shots in the 1970s. A picture should have more to stand on than special effects.
furcafe
Veteran
I think Al was just trying to point out that w/a RF, even if you're careful w/your composition, sliding the camera to maintain proper focus (as opposed to simply pivoting the camera) will often still alter the relationship between objects in the foreground/background in a way that's not visible in the VF as it would be in an SLR/TLR, the classic example being if you're trying to line up something between 2 fence posts.
ulrikft
Established
So, shallow dof is a special effect? Is using the rule of thirds a special effect too? or color balance composition? converging lines? How is a low depth of field suddenly not a tool, like other tools, but a special effect...?
And the argument "All I said was that it is very seldom successful" from Roger is something I just think is.. well, not very close to real life, as I see many sucessfull thin dof shots every day.
I can just as easily argue that "everything in focus is a gimmick" as the oppsite, and you guys have yet to make any compelling reason for me to think that such an argument is better or worse than the ones you are making.
furcafe
Veteran
The only real downside I can think of to shallow DoF, whether it's employed as a legitimate artistic effect or "gimmick," or simply the necessary side effect of shooting in low light, is that fast lenses are much more expensive than slow lenses. 
rxmd
May contain traces of nut
You can argue that way, but under this argument there are no special effects, as everything can be a tool. HDR is a tool, fisheyes are a tool, cross processing is a tool, lensflares are a tool, B&W with colour highlights is a tool, KPT Page Curl was a tool. You can see it that way, but fads still exist.
The difference between a tool and a gimmick is in the usage. Who said the two are mutually exclusive? Those were and are all useful (Page Curl is debatable
), but nevertheless they also all were fads at some point, and now the fad is thin DOF.Yes, and some years ago that was a neat original idea. If a picture has something to stand on, great. If all it has to stand on is a shallow DOF effect and the nice bokeh of the lens, something is missing. I don't know about you, but after the umpteenth still life with an empty wineglass or bottle with blurred back- and foreground or the ten thousandth incarnation of a row of piano keys taken with a Canon 85/f1.2 I get bored.
Well, and if by that you start off a trend, and lots of people begin to pick it up, and in ten years we see only everything-in-focus shots and instead of strapping ND filters in front of Noctiluxes everybody shoots at 102.400 ISO, what started off as a useful tool for certain photographic situations will indeed have become a gimmick.
Philipp
Sparrow
Veteran
I thought it had already gone from gimmick to cliché
jasperamsterdam
Established
I will start practising! Please stop the "to DOF or not to DOF" debate, it was never my intention to label all shallowDOF maestro's as being gimmicky!
I'm guilty myself sometimes..
In general though i think once in a while its always good to overthink the things you do, and the choices you make doing them. I think Roger just shared us his experience doing just that overthinking and looking back.
That's all.
Thanks again I hope i will be as succesfull as Sander in mastering the slide.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasperamsterdam/sets/72157606122144735/
I'm guilty myself sometimes..
In general though i think once in a while its always good to overthink the things you do, and the choices you make doing them. I think Roger just shared us his experience doing just that overthinking and looking back.
That's all.
Thanks again I hope i will be as succesfull as Sander in mastering the slide.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasperamsterdam/sets/72157606122144735/
ferider
Veteran
Hmm.
The OP had focus problems with a 28/2.8 lens on an M8. What that has to do with ultra-shallow DOF photos is not clear to me.
And Jasper, let me repeat: if you have consistent problems with this combo, something is wrong and it might not be you.
Also, while I am not saying any of my photos above are good, they were taken in dim light which was the major reason to open the lenses up that wide.
Roland.
The OP had focus problems with a 28/2.8 lens on an M8. What that has to do with ultra-shallow DOF photos is not clear to me.
And Jasper, let me repeat: if you have consistent problems with this combo, something is wrong and it might not be you.
Also, while I am not saying any of my photos above are good, they were taken in dim light which was the major reason to open the lenses up that wide.
Roland.
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jasperamsterdam
Established
Shall we discuss the quality of the Bokeh in your (nice) photo's?
btw ofcourse your right; when its dark, you need light, you need to open the lens.. but.. shooting a wine bottle? come on man! (jokingly)
btw ofcourse your right; when its dark, you need light, you need to open the lens.. but.. shooting a wine bottle? come on man! (jokingly)
ferider
Veteran
While the word bokeh is modern, bokeh shots are not a modern flickr fad. Check out Robert Frank's work - he used it all the time. In particular have a look at "Medals" from 1951.
Not any wine bottle
Not any wine bottle
jasperamsterdam
Established
Never tried the Luigi Einaudi, was it one of his sweet wines?
Must admit i did the same (taking a photo) when drinking a precious Burgundy i opened recently
Must admit i did the same (taking a photo) when drinking a precious Burgundy i opened recently
ulrikft
Established
Well, with small sensor phone cams, hyperfocal f/8 rangefinder-nuts and small sensor digital cameras... everything in focus is the rule, beacause, well, you can't get anything else.. So my hunch is that this is just bitterness towards the great dof-control SLRs out there
When it comes to, for instance, portraiture, low dof is _the_ rule for me, like this guy's photography:
http://BenoitPaille.deviantart.com/art/A-stranger-Subway-montreal-139277746
Which I find quite nice, but would look ordinary with a everything-in-focus-dof.
There is a time and a place for almost everything (but selective coloring and low dof piano shots).
So my hunch is that this is just bitterness towards the great dof-control SLRs out there When it comes to, for instance, portraiture, low dof is _the_ rule for me, like this guy's photography:
http://BenoitPaille.deviantart.com/art/A-stranger-Subway-montreal-139277746
Which I find quite nice, but would look ordinary with a everything-in-focus-dof.
There is a time and a place for almost everything (but selective coloring and low dof piano shots).
Sparrow
Veteran
Shallow DOF and the appreciation of Bokeh is different, it’s a relatively new visual effect, and it isn’t really how we see the world it’s an artefact of the medium, akin to believing brush-marks exist in mature because the Impressionists put them to good effect on their paintings, I’m not sure if that’s a gimmick or not
jasperamsterdam
Established
Thanks for the link to Rinze van Brug. I've been on his site before but forgot his name..
I remember seeing his beautiful portrait (close,frontal, blonde/reddish girl) in LFI and thought:
Damn, thats one serious application for a gimmicky lens like the Noctilux. Especialy printed fairly large in a magazine oposed to the tiny flickr mush
http://www.rinze.com/
I remember seeing his beautiful portrait (close,frontal, blonde/reddish girl) in LFI and thought:
Damn, thats one serious application for a gimmicky lens like the Noctilux. Especialy printed fairly large in a magazine oposed to the tiny flickr mush
http://www.rinze.com/
ulrikft
Established
Well, if I focus on my finger up close, the rest of the world does go blurry.
And when it comes to visual effects and not, the debate about what we actually see, and what the brain just fills in by tehcnique, is also quite interesting.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Indeed. I take it you're familiar with Richard Gregory's Eye and Brain and The Intelligent Eye. There may be some fascinating research to do on who likes shallow d-o-f; who likes deep field; and their perceptions of other things.
Cheers,
R.
furcafe
Veteran
Agreed. The vast majority of imagery is of the "everything in focus" school. To the extent that there's a narrow DoF "trend," it's a pretty small 1.
Well, with small sensor phone cams, hyperfocal f/8 rangefinder-nuts and small sensor digital cameras... everything in focus is the rule, beacause, well, you can't get anything else..
Sparrow
Veteran
Not at one metre it doesn’t, sorry but it hasn’t become that embedded in our visual idiom yet.
Perspective started being used about 500 BC but some western artists still painted a cognitive reality well into the Middle Ages, bokeh is very much a new boy at the moment.
PS some still work in a cognitive reality in the East
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Al Kaplan
Veteran
One thing that I want to try again is using pinhole size apertures (around f/180) on a lens. I did a number of images that way over forty years ago and still have a couple of prints hanging on the wall. I put a pinhole in contact with the front element of a Minolta Autocord, left the camera diaphragm wide open to avoid vignetting, and made some many minutes long exposures. The lens gives you a sharp image but the pinhole causes diffraction effects. This is really the opposite of selective focus, but interesting. The TLR makes viewing and focussing possible, and with close-up lenses you can get down to about 0.25 meters.
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Roger Hicks
Veteran
Sorry for hijacking the thread! It just seemed relevant, seeing you originally asked about fast lenses.
To return to how to focus, a point no-one has mentioned is 'equivalent focus'.
In other words, although the human eye is surprsingly good at judging distance (or can be trained to be so), it is even better at judging which of two things is closer/further away, and which are at the same distance.
Now, let's say you want someone's eye in the upper corner of a pic. You can see how far away that is, and you can see something else that is at the equivalent distance, but a lot closer to the centre of the image: an ear-lobe, maybe. So focus on the ear-lobe.
This may sound impossibly complex and circuitous, but then, a lot of things do when you first think about them (or worse still, try to explain them). How many equations do you solve when you catch a ball, for example?
Another technique is 'rocking'. You focus on an eye. You know it will be a few cm further away when you recompose; so you rock forwards slightly to compensate.
Both techniques are only relevant in the extreme close up, extreme aperture range.
Cheers,
R.