What's your favorite apeture?

T

Todd.Hanz

Guest
Favorite settings? What is your "go to" apeture? You know, the one you would set if all things were right every time, or do you a set a fixed shutter speed and click away?
Post an example if you please and explain your choice......


I like wide open apetures, f1.4 - f4 max., I gotta have some bokeh, OOF areas make me happy. I often sacrifice sharpness for pillowy soft backgrounds and movement. Here's one at f1.4..........
 
Don't have a favourite aperature and use one that will get the results that I am after for that shot. Generally more open to pop subject from background or stopped down for landscapes. Then there are the times that you have no choice and use whatever is feasible given film speed in use, what shutter speeds are available and the amount of light present. All personal taste I guess. Like the F2 portrait

Bob
 
I'll echo Nikon Bob's comments. I prefer to isolate my primary subject with an aperture that throws the foreground and background out of focus. That can be anything depending upon circumstances. Sometimes I'll use the hyper-focal distance to include everything to infinity sharp.

I guess what I'm saying is: It depends.

Walker
 
Like you, Todd, I'm a nut for wide open lenses. I usually try to shoot wide open - which in my case is usually f2, but sometimes f4, like with my Elmar C (90/4).
Reason? The same why I went over to the dark side: bokeh and creamy OOF areas, separation of foreground and background.
If I had more money than brains, I'd probably go for the Noctilux :D
I try to go only for those lens which are excellent even wide open. I'm not interested in f-stops above 4 or 5.6, like for the landscapes.
I got other cameras for landscapes - how about a lens that goes to F128? I got one :)
But I wouldn't use for the same kind of shots that I take with my Summicron 50/2.

Yep, in 35mm format, and on a RF camera, I like it as wide as it goes....

Denis
 
"What's your favorite aperture"?
Ok, you're getting a wee bit personal.

Maybe someone can help me understand something. I like everything in focus, so I shoot at smaller apertures when I can. To me, a rangefinder is the best tool for this as it shows me everything in focus in the viewfinder. Now, if you want shallow depth of field, and you are shooting wide open, doesn't that sound like a job for an slr? Look through the lens wide open and see the focus you are going to get. Am I missing something?
 
ooops, forgot to attach a typical photo...

Here it is - Summicron 50/2 on a Leica M2.

Denis
 
1.4, 2, 2.8 or 3.5 if pushing film, 8, and 16. can't say i like 5.6, 11, or 22...whatever that means.
 
as I'm a beginer, I'm always full of hesitation, I tend to use about 5.6 for landscapes as I was thinking that most of the lens will do a great job at that aperture. for portraits sometimes background is also nice to distinct but I'm often limitated by smaller apertures of my lens : 35/2.5. So whenever light is not dark, choice is difficult.
 
I use F5.6 to 11 a lot, the old "f8 and and be there" rule.

When I shoot in the streets it has to be fast and I trade shutter speed for DoF.

Given enough time, I shoot wide open to avoid flash and sometimes I'm lucky.

And to the typical pics :)

I shot Ama in Matanzas with bright sunlight on BW400CN in a Contax TVS at f5.6 1/30 and Manu on Tri-X pushed to 1600 at night under dimmed halogen spots with a Contax G2 and Planar 45 at f2 1/15
 
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i like wide open but i don't need a fast lens.
for the street i still keep it mostly open though sometimes i'll set up for hyper focal.

no great need for lots of dof and i am not in the least concerned about BOKEH!
buying lenses because of how the oof areas will look is nuts, imho.
i doubt you will find a non shooter that would notice the oof area.
people look at the general scene or the eyes of a person in a shot. most do not look at the oof areas in the background.

ok ok enuf from me.

joe
 
You may be right Joe, but it's the OOF areas that make the eyes pop and help focus the attn. where you want it.
I prefer to focus on the eyes when shooting portraits wide open, if I shot the picture of my son above at f11 I doubt it would have the same effect.

Todd
 
i agree about the pop which is why i like to shoot more open than not. but it's because the background is out of focus that the subject pops. i just don't buy that it's because of the quality of the oof area.

i'm a cynic in some ways. this just seems like something that people have caught on to and i think that there are those people out there (not you) that treat this like wine tasting and they have a more discerning palatte.
it doesn't seem real to me.

joe
 
I used to keep all my lens gear in f8, and shoot at whatever shutterspeed it needed, thinking the combination would compensate for my inability to focus well with an SLR. When I discovered rangefinder cameras, despite the ease to focus, that old habit was hard to kick... until I went to Barcelona. I literally wrecked an entire roll of Portra B&W because of this mania of mine: nothing spells "wrong" better than one single roll of fairly good shots gone flat due to an excess of sharpness.

After this experience, I chose to give light some slack, weaned myself from f8 and now, I'm a fan of wide apertures. In fact, I even came to like OOF shots (not that I make a lot of them but the OOF zones are kinda nice looking when your subject is really sharp).

There you go! :)
 
I end up at f/4 most of the time, indoors. Outdoors I rather like f/8 if possible.
 
Wide open at f2 or f1.4. That's where the personality of the lens really comes out. Beyond f4 every lens basically looks the same in my opinion.
 
..depends on object, light, and situation. Some lenses are best at f/5.6, some at f/8, some are unique (if not best) wide open. I like it fast (f/~1.4). With them, I use them wide open. Don't carry arround a one pound lens if you don't use their speed. Thats why I favorize cameras with 1/2000s. Otherwise, I like my not so fast, but compact lenses as well, i.e. Canon 3.5/100, for using at f/5.6-8. My fastest RF usable telephoto is a 1.8/85. Sometimes I want it faster, but then, I use my Zeiss 1.4/85 ...on a nice small black Yashica SLR-twin of VL Bessa-R, same handling, 1/2000s as well... no RF in the world allows out-of-area control on a focussing screen. That's what SLR's for. I gave away *all* of my SLR stuff except long and fast lenses. The rest is RF now.

cheers, Frank

picture at f/0.95
 
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