Idle thoughts on over-use of shallow DOF with fast lenses wide open

THanks for starting this useful discussion. I have mostly avoided using shallow depth of field until rather recently because I so often am shooting simple cameras that require estimation of focal distance and fast film, and small apertures help to avoid missing the proper focus altogether. Lately, I have made an effort to be more deliberate in using shallow depth of field with slow films and long lenses.
The shot below at the zoo was with a 75-230 zoom at f/5.6. I think the ropes in the background would have been very distracting if they were in sharp focus, but it seems to me that the rope pattern in this case contributes some useful balance.
The shot of the two baile folklorico dancers was made with a 135mm lens on my Pentax ME. I think the repetition of design elements contributes to the composition while the slight oof of the background subject properly emphasizes the foreground subject.
The last shot illustrates the same ideas as that of the dancers, but in this instance the lens was a NIkkor 1.8/50 and the shallow depth of field was mostly the product of the very close focal distance.
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Coldkennels said:
I wonder if the "problem" is people are just reacting to decades of wide angle street photography, where people would use (and abuse) insane depths of field to work fast and grab shots quickly - regardless of how visually cluttered the resulting shot was. Cultures, philosophies, and art movements end up swinging wildly from one extreme to another, and I feel the oversaturation of those snapshot images made the "selective focus" of a 50/1.2 shot wide open seem more "artistic" and stand out more.
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As an aside, I'm reminded of my cousin's husband, who purportedly got a scholarship to study photography in France, but his work looked like someone gave a camera to a complete noob. My cousin proudly told Dad that her husband was 'really getting into his wide angle lens' (a Canon 10-22 EFS) and yet his photos looked terrible. No sense of composition, the frame completely cluttered with disparate subjects and objects, nothing looked 'right'.
 
In the late 90s and early 2000s I saw incredibly good street photography by Stephen Holloway, who lived in London and Switzerland. Unfortunately his website is long gone. One of his approaches was to use a 50/1.5 Summarit or 50/1 Noctilux at 1m and wide open. A lot of his work was really compelling. It’s quite simple - some photos work with shallow depth of field and some don’t. But if you decide to work one way, sifting out what works and what doesn’t is really critical - just thinking everything is good because it’s shot ‘wide open’ is just wrong.
 
Freakscene said:
In the late 90s and early 2000s I saw incredibly good street photography by Stephen Holloway, who lived in London and Switzerland. Unfortunately his website is long gone. One of his approaches was to use a 50/1.5 Summarit or 50/1 Noctilux at 1m and wide open. A lot of his work was really compelling. It’s quite simple - some photos work with shallow depth of field and some don’t. But if you decide to work one way, sifting out what works and what doesn’t is really critical - just thinking everything is good because it’s shot ‘wide open’ is just wrong.
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Do you recall the URL? Maybe it was captured in the Wayback Machine.
 
This is with the Summilux 35mm set to f/4 (camera recorded f/3.4) ...


Ted - Sunnyvale 2023
Leica M10 Monochrom, Summilux 35mm f/1.4 v2, Green filter
ISO 800 @ f/3.4 @ 1/125​

... which shows you don't always need to be wide open or at f/2 or larger apertures to achieve a nice background blur. (With the M10 Monochrom and its astonishingly clean ISO 50,000 captures, you don't even need super-fast aperture settings for low light!)

G
 
“Idle thoughts on over-use of shallow DOF with fast lenses wide open”

We’re all on a journey; some people are just starting, others are near the end. Some folks are eager and excited, full of creative energy, wanting to push the limits of our photographic tools and others have been there and done that and want to focus on the aspects of photography that really interest them.

I feel like I’m in both camps. I like fast lenses and crazy wild bokeh. I also like the opposite of that, sharp clear backgrounds, landscapes and seascapes that are picture perfect postcard-like representations of what is in front of me.

But, I also like long exposures… I like abstract photography too! I like color, I like monochrome… people, street, mountains, oceans, animals, travel, documentary… I like it all!

Anyway, I have yet to reach my limit on the over-use of shallow DOF with fast lenses wide open. I'm still enjoying the journey.

All the best,
Mike
 
Some seem to be misconstruing my point here, which was most certainly not that lenses shouldn't be used wide open, nor that selective focus should not be used.

I was just suggesting that if stopping down a bit will improve the photo then do that, already! Just as: if opening the aperture up will improve the photo, then do that instead.

My point was that the photograph should guide the technique, rather than allowing reflexive or unthinking use of a particular technique to overly constrain or adversely impact the photo(s) taken.

...Mike
 
mfunnell said:
Before I even get started, I'll fully acknowledge this is probably a subject which is well "done to death".

Nonetheless, two or three scotches into the evening, and contemplating a photo I took today, I thought to put my idle thoughts out here anyway.

Here's the photo, for what it's worth:


It was absolutely taken as a test photo, with it's primary (initial) purpose being testing how well (by my standards) I do when converting digital colour to B&W - yet (it seems) I've added a secondary purpose of going through my range of 50mm RF lenses (yikes! I have a lot) to re-familiarise myself with how they render.

Which is how, here, I think I got myself "in trouble" as it were. If I followed my natural inclinations when taking this photo, I'd have stopped my lens (a Canon 50mm/F1.4 in LTM) down to about f2.8 or more likely f4. But I was testing. So I kept the lens wide open. I suspect this would be a better photograph if I had stopped down (I'm not saying it would be a good photo, just a better one).

If I had, I'd still have had foreground subject separation, the point of best focus would still be the coffee cup, but the overall rendering, I'm guessing (I can only guess) would be 'better' - at least to the extent that all of my foreground subject (the bloke in the white T-shirt) would be in acceptable focus, not just the coffee cup and the seam of his jeans (which is where the plane of focus happened to run - I was looking at the coffee cup alone).

My guess is that, too often, people wanting subject isolation think only of "fast lens, wide open" and less of "light playing with shadow" and other tone and contrast factors quite separate from simple narrow depth-of-field.

Or maybe I've just had a scotch (or two) too many for today.

Your thoughts?

...Mike
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I haven't read all of the replies yet, so apologies if I repeat something, but here are my thoughts: I've criticized overly narrow DoF before, but I also recognize that a) it has its place in creating a mood, and b) sometimes it's unavoidable. For the latter point, if you're shooting film especially, you have to open up the lens aperture in low-light, interior conditions. That's fine, and, to me, an authentic use of shallow DoF.

I would say with this particular photo that the DoF may feel too shallow because the subject is leading me as the viewer to look at what he's looking towards. It's signaling me to take my observation in that direction, and then I'm noticing that I can't make out the details clearly. I think that's largely because I can't see the main subject's face. He's not an engaging enough subject for me to avoid also scanning the rest of the frame for more objects of interest. Plus, of course, he's looking that way, which instinctively directs a human to also train their attention in the same direction.

If I saw his face, I think my own attention would rest more securely inside the area of decent focus. But, as I said earlier, the shallow DoF is quite excusable given the lower light conditions.
 
I often use a fast short telephoto lens wide open for head and shoulders portraits.
SLRs are especially friendly to this use. I guess I just love the tired old clichè.

Chris
 
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