Monday 13 July 2009











13/7/09

Project 2 and 3

Well, I started out with what I thought was a good idea. With rain threatening – the row of houses in our road taken from our upstairs window.

In practice – not quite so good. All the houses are too far away meaning the experimental focus ranges are negligible. My nearest point of focus is too far away and it means everything else falls into the hyperfocal area beyond my focus point and is pretty much in focus. Maybe a longer lens would have let me play with the focus.

Now it is raining!

Intermediate learning outcome: revisit this with a much tighter, longer line of objects and perhaps with a 300mm lens.

Back soon!

17/7/09

Update:

Using a line of chairs in our garden I’ve completed Projects 2 and 3. Equipped the camera with the Canon EF 75-300mm USM III zoom. It can handle F4 widest.

In project 2, I much prefer the ‘near’ focus chair – it is picked out from the distant field and makes for dramatic emphasis (so far as a plastic chair can have dramatic emphasis!). Please see the two photographs uploaded.

Learning outcome: dramatic emphasis on an object with a narrow depth of field is a known technique, so long as it captures the viewer’s attention satisfactorily. To capture the attention, the object could be the main subject, or positioned nearer the viewer so the viewer does not have to find the focused object somewhere in a larger field of unfocussed objects. The ‘near chair’ picture stands out and catches the eye a little more.

Project 3

Wide and narrow apertures

I upload the ‘near’ and ‘far’ chair photos – I’ve not uploaded the middle one. In the wide aperture picture (F4) the field of view is as expected, very slim. (I had some focusing issues with the camera eye viewer – time to see an optician?).

In the narrow aperture (F32) the whole picture is in focus from the black pencil box at the back to the arrowed object intruding (un-artistically) in the foreground. The ringed flower head is blurred because the narrow aperture forced a slow shutter speed (I did not compensate with altering the ISO) and it moved in the breeze.

Learning outcome: being a landscaper at heart this is all as expected for me and I would normally compensate for shutter speed issues at narrow apertures by upping the ISO a little, if necessary. Having said that I would not usually use F32 unless absolutely necessary – I tend to go to F22 as a maximum to avoid any distortions.