Does short DOF help making good picture?

[semilog]

I suppose what I would have been claiming, if I had been claiming more than I wrote, is that there are limitations to a backward-looking, counting-based approach to aesthetics, and that some of those limitations are on display in this thread.

My view of this is that if you know the history of photography, you know that there is very little under the sun that is new. Probably the only thing really new in the last two decades, in fact, is the advent of low-noise, high-ISO digital sensors. But these have little effect on DoF (the subject under discussion), as such.**

With respect to DoF, we may in fact conclude that (in a technical sense) nearly everything worth trying has been tried, many times, by many people. That is, a large parameter space has been well-sampled by good photographers. So we look at the products of this intensive sampling, at what has emerged as the most important work in the medium.

My contention is that shallow DoF is not a technique used in most great (long-lasting, influential) photos. Some, but not most.

**I've just realized that the elephants in the room, the things that are dominating today's photographic DoF vernacular, are not Noct-Nikkors and Summiluxes – but rather the Holga and the Lensbaby.

 

[Matthew Runkel]

My contention is that shallow DoF is not a technique used in most great (long-lasting, influential) photos. Some, but not most.
.[/I]

With the caveat that which group of great photos those are is ultimately subjective, I agree with this statement. Individuals and groups did decide which photographs to include in the canon of the greats, however.

Like many things, shallow DOF can be overused, become an affectation, become trite. These days it is often a way of showing that your camera can do things others can't, which is not an artistic impulse.

We can probably agree that in art, having more different things to play around with can lead to both very good and very bad results.

 

[Sparrow]

Yes, but does it "help making good limerick"?

... well yes, actually, it is essential in making a limerick good or otherwise, the quality is in the hands of its' author, no? ... one (personal pronoun) should not get obsessive over one (cardinal number) thing, limited DOF while an arrow in the quiver is not the most accurate us Indians have, I believe

 

[Roger Hicks]

Literature is also stuffed full of rules (grammar, syntax, spelling, tenses...)

Good pictures, like literature, require many things. Getting hung up on one thing make both creator and critic stale.

When criticizing anything, though, or indeed, when just remarking upon it, there is an inevitable necessity to talk about one thing at a time.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

... well yes, actually, it is essential in making a limerick good or otherwise, the quality is in the hands of its' author, no? ... one (personal pronoun) should not get obsessive over one (cardinal number) thing, limited DOF while an arrow in the quiver is not the most accurate us Indians have, I believe

Dear Stewart,

Then again, my favourite limerick subverts the form:

There was a young man of St. Bees,
Who was stung on the nose by a wasp.
When asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied "No, it doesn't,
But I'm glad that it wasn't a hornet."

Is it still a limerick? I think it is; but I'd be hard pressed to defend that (admittedly somewhat tenuous) belief.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Neare]

While I agree with your conclusion I would suggest photography is the one art that is stuffed full of rules, aperture/shutter speed ratios, film speed and it's chemistry, light, refraction and reflection of lenses and the rest, no?

Well, not really. If you want to paint you have to use something that will put a visible image on paper, whether that be paint and brush or dipping your finger into your cup of coffee and using that... but then there was that artist to exhibited a blank canvas and got huge amounts of respect for it.
With photography, you don't 'have' to expose anything right. There is a guideline on how to expose correctly but it is not a rule to do so, who says you cannot exhibit a completely overexposed photo if it delivers the message you're trying to convey?
You have to use something that is photosensitive to make a photo, while you could call this a rule I think this is a basis for photography that needs to be meet before rules even come into the picture.

Check this thing out http://www.lomography.com/magazine/...egg-my-journey-to-build-an-egg-pinhole-camera

Anyhow, there are rules of reality and how light works etc, but these aren't rules of photography.

 

[Peter^]

Art (painting, literature, theater, whatever) is often about going by rules and trying to subvert them at the same time. It is a mixture between redundancy (the known, the expected) and entropy (the new, the element of surprise, the artistic moment). As soon as something is overused, it becomes expected and thus banal, especially if someone tries to formulate a rule. If someone says "a play should always consist of five acts", then it is high time to write one with four.
That's part of the problem with bokeh. We all talk about it so much that it now seems to be no more than a cheap trick. And a statement such as "short DoF makes better pictures" goes completely against our instincts.
Nevertheless, I like to shoot wide open and to play with DoF. Does that make me a bad photographer?

 

[Ariefb]

"Does short DOF help making good picture?"

Probably not. But shooting wide open is certainly fun.
Besides, what is "good picture" anyway?

 

[Sparrow]

Well, not really. If you want to paint you have to use something that will put a visible image on paper, whether that be paint and brush or dipping your finger into your cup of coffee and using that... but then there was that artist to exhibited a blank canvas and got huge amounts of respect for it.
With photography, you don't 'have' to expose anything right. There is a guideline on how to expose correctly but it is not a rule to do so, who says you cannot exhibit a completely overexposed photo if it delivers the message you're trying to convey?
You have to use something that is photosensitive to make a photo, while you could call this a rule I think this is a basis for photography that needs to be meet before rules even come into the picture.

Check this thing out http://www.lomography.com/magazine/...egg-my-journey-to-build-an-egg-pinhole-camera

Anyhow, there are rules of reality and how light works etc, but these aren't rules of photography.

I'm afraid I can't agree with that type of artistic relativism, art made by accident cannot have the same value or validity as that conceived in the artists mind and created by his skill and knowledge, sorry

 

[furcafe]

Of course there's a lot more to photography than photojournalism, but in the PJ world, perhaps guys like Dave Burnett, Chris Usher, et al. spawned a mini-trend of shallow DoF w/their use of large format, Holgas, tilt-shift, & other techniques normally associated w/art photography. If so, Dave has often said he was @ tired of seeing so many PJ shots that looked the same, i.e., a deliberate reaction to the old motto of f/8 & be there, "tight & bright," etc.

Then you are not looking at much contemporary photojournalism. The motto seems to be f1.4 in bright daylight and be there.

 

[Neare]

I'm afraid I can't agree with that type of artistic relativism, art made by accident cannot have the same value or validity as that conceived in the artists mind and created by his skill and knowledge, sorry

Never did I say that any of those examples were by accident. Can you not make the choice yourself to overexpose? That is my point.

 

[Sparrow]

Never did I say that any of those examples were by accident. Can you not make the choice yourself to overexpose? That is my point.

Well yes I can make that choice, but then I know the rules of exposure ... someone who did not know those rules could not, which is what I said in the first place .... photography is one art that is stuffed full of rules

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I'm afraid I can't agree with that type of artistic relativism, art made by accident cannot have the same value or validity as that conceived in the artists mind and created by his skill and knowledge, sorry

O.h, getting into the Lomo/Holga territory...

 

[Neare]

Hah, no you see what I'm arguing is that how you expose an image it not a 'rule', a rule implies something that you have to follow. There are no 'rules' of exposure, only attributes.

2 big burly men with baseball bats don't come knocking at your door if you don't expose each and every shot perfectly.

This 'rule' idea behind how to do photography comes from all those regurgitated books/magazines on "How to take amazing photos!" etc. But these are not actually rules, these are only opinions.

 

[ZeissFan]

There's more to a photo than bokeh. Taking one approach to photography is limiting -- and boring to view.

 

[Sparrow]

Hah, no you see what I'm arguing is that how you expose an image it not a 'rule', a rule implies something that you have to follow. There are no 'rules' of exposure, only attributes.

2 big burly men with baseball bats don't come knocking at your door if you don't expose each and every shot perfectly.

This 'rule' idea behind how to do photography comes from all those regurgitated books/magazines on "How to take amazing photos!" etc. But these are not actually rules, these are only opinions.

Sorry, I'm obviously not making myself clear; light which is the basis of photography follows clear and well understood rules.

Those rules when combined with the physical rules of lens design, the maths of aperture and shutter speeds settings, and the principals of film, or sensor technology can be used to create an image.

If one understands those rules one can predict the that image from a given set of settings, if one denies their existence then the image created is by blind chance.

 

[semilog]

Besides, what is "good picture" anyway?

I'd say that knowing the answer to that is more important than knowing good bokeh from bad.

;-)

 

[Neare]

Sorry, I'm obviously not making myself clear; light which is the basis of photography follows clear and well understood rules.

Those rules when combined with the physical rules of lens design, the maths of aperture and shutter speeds settings, and the principals of film, or sensor technology can be used to create an image.

If one understands those rules one can predict the that image from a given set of settings, if one denies their existence then the image created is by blind chance.

Yeah I do know where your coming from. However, I don't see the rules of light as the rules of photography nor are the rules of physics. These 'rules' existed long before some Joe Blog invented the camera.

My original post said "There are no rules in photography" aka, you can use whatever means to take whatever type of photograph, that there is no right and wrong in creating good photographic work.

Perhaps were our argument lies is in the definition of the word 'rule'. 😉

 

[Roger Hicks]

Yeah I do know where your coming from. However, I don't see the rules of light as the rules of photography nor are the rules of physics. These 'rules' existed long before some Joe Blog invented the camera.

My original post said "There are no rules in photography" aka, you can use whatever means to take whatever type of photograph, that there is no right and wrong in creating good photographic work.

Perhaps were our argument lies is in the definition of the word 'rule'. 😉

Indeed. Quite a convincing rule is, "Don't put the fixer in before the developer."

Cheers,

R.

 

[Neare]

Hey if I'm one of those types who like to take a scalpel to a neg before printing I might be into that Roger... 😀

I could make the choice to dip a neg in fix for a few seconds, then develop then fully fix again couldn't I? I could use that process to create a certain type of photograph and it still has the potential to be a good photograph.

There are rules in that "there is only one way to do this and everything else in wrong" and then there are guidelines which can recommend ways to obtain something. Art is full of guidelines without a doubt, but I will continue to argue that there are rules.