FastFreddy2 Posted November 6, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 6, 2015 For a while back in the late 90's, I used to do Computer Fairs. I had been given - over a period of time - computer equipment being disposed of because of the "Millennium bug" (that never arrived). I tarted it all up, and had some quite busy Saturdays/Sundays for a number of weeks. Once, a chap laughed at my stock. I asked why. I had on my bench, some 20gb hard drives for £5, which were enormously popular, thankfully. He pointed out that not so long ago, he had "paid hundreds" for a hard drive that size, and was somewhat embarrassed/miffed/disappointed at how quickly the investment had depreciated. Not many people will know (or care) that the original IBM PC's didn't come with a hard drive, but two 5¼" floppy drives, with if I remember, 360k of space on each. One used for the operating system, the other for programs/data. I personally have used a 286 (with 287 co-processor) and 10gb 5¼" hard drive, for doing forecasting work in a professional environment. The company paid thousands for that kit. The main program employed was DOS 3. something (I think) with Lotus 1-2-3, and the spreadsheet we used was so cumbersome, you literally could down a cup of coffee while it loaded. I nag everyone about backing up data - why should you escape? While culling can be useful to maintain some working space, I hope you have some sort of backup/storage that would include a copy of your most important work being kept 'off site'? Most people (rightly) don't expect theft or fire to completely remove all digital media from their lives, but like any insurance policy, eventually some do. iCloud? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 6, 2015 Report Share Posted November 6, 2015 I am a photographer and my most important images are backed up, and in the cloud, and copies are with my agency who in turn have their own back ups. I like to think I am safe, but I still worry. i know little about computers or computing, only what the storage capacity is. My laptop is like a glorifued typewriter and photo editing machine. As long as it fulfills those two functions I don't ask too many questions! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 6, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 6, 2015 I did a C+G in photography at Herts College of Arts and Design. It was done when it was film or nothing. I once spent a week trying to reproduce a Fuji machine print (6x4) handprinted onto Kodak paper (8x10). If you've experienced the difference in colour responses of the respect papers, you'll understand what a 'hiding to nothing' that experience was. I could either get the sky correctly colour matched, or the foliage - not both. My excuse for not realising it was an impossible task, was "blind" enthusiasm. My preferred style was portraiture. While this is quite an immodest thing to say, I've yet to do a portrait, that the sitter didn't like. Even the self-portraits, though I was somewhere between a girls size 8 and 10 at the time, and I wasn't wearing mens clothes. I hope we meet up at some stage. I'm sure you could fill in a lot of the 'digital' gaps I have.... Plus I like to look at photographs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 7, 2015 Report Share Posted November 7, 2015 I learned photography back in the 1970s and loved the time I spent in the darkroom. I could disappear into the university's darkroom for hours, emerging only to head out with my camera once more, either up into the mountains or along raffishly cool neon-lit Central Avenue in Albuquerque where I was living at the time and which was a last vestige of the original Route 66. Much as I loved my time in the darkroom, and benefitted from it, I would never go back to film. I am a wholehearted convert to digital. When was the last time you could go out and take pin sharp photos at ISO6400, as I can with my present camera. Back in the day you were going some to push Tri-X to 1600 and that was grainy as hell. I'm not bad at portraiture, which is good as I have an assignment coming up in Africa where portraiture is going to figure heavily! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 7, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 7, 2015 I have used film at 3200 (XP1 or XP2) at a 'push', and still found it wanting. I have yet to see anything from a digital camera above 1600 that didn't look flat. If I'm honest, I've yet to see anything with digital that didn't look slightly less vivid than something produced on film. While a £2000/£3000 digital camera might produce a more realistic image, (a camera that I will never own) a £50 film camera will match it in 99% of circumstances. The thing for me has always been detail. I used to read about lenses, and the astigmatism/lack of focus in corners etc. Don't ever remember reading about Kodachrome 25 not being able to catch every single detail and hue available. I sometimes used medium format, and still own an 'as new' Mamiya 67 ProS with a 180mm lens. I would be seriously amazed if any digital equipment away from a space probe, could match the detail and accuracy produced by such a camera. Not that it's done me much good. I got busy with a career in manufacturing around '84 with MRP1 and MRP2 becoming much more important than the latest film or paper from Kodak or Fuji. My foray into digital has been recent, and not without challenges of its own. My use for it has always been surreptitious low light photography. For portraits I much prefer a studio environment. More than once I've chosen properties on the length of the main room in the house. I still own 2 (as new) Bowens 400D's and a Bowens mono gold, and everything else that would be needed in the studio. Yousuf Karsh is a hero, as is Bob Carlos Clarke, as is John French. There are images I like from Cartier-Bresson, and even some from Ansel Adams. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 7, 2015 Report Share Posted November 7, 2015 Cartier-Bressn is one of my heroes too. I use a full-frame Canon 5D3 with Zeiss primes and the resolution and colour is unreal. The 5D3 is famous for its low light capabilities with ISO3200 easily usable in critical applications and often ISO6400 is usable as well. The new version of the 5D, which I hope to pick up in the next few months, has 50MP - enough resolution even to test the Zeiss lenses and the new generation of Canon L-series lenses. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 8, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 8, 2015 Zeiss primary lenses, (£500 - to over £2500) attached to (a currently 2k+) camera, and about to attach a 50mp 3k camera? "I rest my case." That deals with quality, but hue? Since each colour is 'processed' by the camera's software by way of maintaining detail, I've always felt contrast and hue were compromised. True blacks? Block colours? Is it possible to take a digital photograph of a completely red wall with no other details save the wall, without the software trying to adjust out a single colour 'it' believes is a colour cast from lighting? Entirely possible to get true colours and black shadows with transparency film used in a £50 camera.... You have some nice kit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 8, 2015 Report Share Posted November 8, 2015 Entirely possible to get true colours in digital too. Better and truer than on film. i do have some very nice kit, but bear in mind, too, that these are work tools. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 8, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 8, 2015 7 hours ago, Shyheels said: Entirely possible to get true colours in digital too. Better and truer than on film. That, my good fellow, is entirely .... improbable. In theory, it should be achievable since the conversion of the image (light parsed to digital algorithm) should be able to filter out any colour changes induced by glass, colour shifts from geographical location, time of day or lighting medium. But does a £1000 digital camera achieve this any better than a £50 film camera with historically neutral film like Kodachrome (and unlike Fuji stock)? A £3000 camera, with £2000 lens digitally altered using a £300 software package on a £1000 computer, maybe... But then how much do you spend on a computer screen to get 'true' colours? And will those colours appear equally 'true' on another brand of screen? To a degree I am playing devils advocate here, and being ever-so-slightly playful.... I'm sure every image I've seen in a magazine for at least the last ten years has been produced using a digital camera, and I've not noticed any difference in the medium used to produce the image I look at. The kicker for me, is that these days, more time is spent in post picture editing, than setting up/taking that image. I can't help feeling it distracts from reality. Which one is "real"? All copyrights are acknowledged. Reproduced for educational purposes and discussion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 8, 2015 Report Share Posted November 8, 2015 First of all the low quality of the lens on your imaginary £50 film camera is going to render any comparison with the lens on a £1000 digital meaningless. The quality of the lens has a strong bearing on colour rendition. Were you to make accurate meaningful comparisons you would need like-on-like. Next, in terms of film, comes the issue of matching the correct film with the subject and light. Again a variable. With digital, are you shooting jpeg or RAW? Jpeg discards about 80% of the data acquired by the sensor while RAW stores it away and allows you to make infinite colour corrections in post processing - assuming of course the photographer knows something about colour science and the software he/she is using. there are plenty of colour and white balance cards you can use to ensure you are picking up colours correctly in camera. In terms of matching colour accurately to different screens tyere are a lot of color correcting gadgets and software on the market and the use of them should make colours appear consistently from ine colour corrected screen to another. lastly there are variables in the human eye. i shoot for clients who are exceptionally concerned with quality, colour and light (in addition, of course to composition) If ut were a simple matter of grabbing a £50 film camera and solving all our problems with that, we'd be doing it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 8, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 8, 2015 (edited) 3 hours ago, Shyheels said: i shoot for clients who are exceptionally concerned with quality, colour and light (in addition, of course to composition) If ut were a simple matter of grabbing a £50 film camera and solving all our problems with that, we'd be doing it! I'm not in any way suggesting a £50 camera is an improvement, nor is it easier (if you are guessing at the likely outcome). What I am saying is, £ for £ film provides greater economy, accuracy, and detail than digital UNLESS you are spending £4000 to £5000 on equipment, as indeed you do/have/will. In terms of reproduction to A4 or 10x8, I would be happy to compete in colour against ANY digital equipment in the studio with this: And if we were talking black and white, larger - much larger still. Some of the greatest photographs ever taken, and ever will be taken, have been created using similar cameras. And the issues you mention that can handicap film cameras, also handicap digital equipment, with poorly designed camera software/processors thrown in. This illustrates my experience exactly. Warm rich tones of film with good contrast, verses the apparent flat image produced by a not-inexpensive camera, as shown here, though this was produced on an expensive digital camera... I'm sure images can be found that make film look poor compared to digital, but there are significantly more with the verdict going to film. The difference of course, ease of use with digital. The closest I've seen while looking (briefly), was an edited RAW image that directly compared to film. Which again supports my 'old school' notion that digital shifts the editing from in-camera to a desk and a computer. As before, all copyrights are acknowledged. Reproduced for educational and discussion purposes. Edited November 8, 2015 by FastFreddy2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 8, 2015 Report Share Posted November 8, 2015 I don't know what your parameters would be for this contest but if you were using that camera to compete against ANY digital set up, as you say, you would be up against Hassleblad, Leica, Phase One, in terms of medium format, and the Leica, Nikon 800 and Canon 1DX and 5D series in 35mm and with their modern lenses, dynamic range, low light capabilities and resolution, not to mention the refining, sharpening, colour correction and exposure adjustment possibilities open to the digital images (shot in RAW) in postprocessing, I simply can't see that as being anything ither than a lopsided, one-way contest with Digital the only possible winner. Similarily I do not understand how you come up with the idea that the pictured camera's beating any digital camera in terms of economy since digital has no film or development costs - a huge savings to digital, and one that, what's more, has allowed a vast number of people to develop talent they might never otherwise have discovered since they have the freedom now to shoot at will, experiment, learn without having to count the cost. It us liberating. But that is another argument. The only area where I concede film still has an advantage is in large-format landscape photography - 4x5 or 8x10. But even this is being eroded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 8, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 8, 2015 £50 film camera verses £50 digital camera. Like for like. Cost of film and processing, to be the allowance for any cost of man hours for post digital processing, to include the pro rata'd cost of the editing software. Like for like. You are on-the-money when you say digital photography has provided the world with an almost cost free way to create images, mostly through phones I would say. Nokia has one with a 41mp camera if I remember, and even their old N8 phone had a Carl Zeiss lens capable of stunning pictures. As far as I can see, 999.9% of the images the author's produce, are 'happy snaps'. I look to Facebook/Instagram as my references. Just to make it clear, I am not saying digital is useless. I'm saying film is still superior. While I didn't read the article, one of the places I got back from Google search of "film vs digital" was an 'Oxford' something or other. (Lots of black and white images of a very pretty girl, where the one digital image looked better than film - I thought.) There were many more images, some colour. The responders to the article seemed to rave about Ektar and the skin tones it produced. One responder even saying they had never used film and now wanted to try it. Digital is very very convenient. I carry an Olympus Tough with me everywhere. I take Cartier-Bresson type images -usually of shoes somewhere in the fame- discarding 20 pictures for every one I keep. It also allows me to take very reasonable images to use for selling. It's VERY useful for the before/after photo's of work I've done. For most of these, 'film' just wouldn't be suitable, and for that reason wasn't used 20 years ago. Without digital images, auction sites or many on-line shops, just couldn't exist. Digital is great, and getting better all the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 9, 2015 Report Share Posted November 9, 2015 There are plenty of retro lovers who are keen to try new things such as film and being swept away by the novelty of it all will see whatever they want to see. Film is not superior to digital. It just isn't. If it was, the clients and magazines for which I shoot would be insisting on it - I mean it when I say they are some of the world's most demanding and have budgets to get whatever they like. If they wanted film - if they believed it was superior - that's what I and other pros would be shooting. We would do it for the clients sake if nothing else, because they pay the bills. But nobody is calling for it. And if they did want a film-like effect, there are some very good top-end software packages that can deliver that same result - on digital. A colleague of mine recently did a travelling exhibition that went around Asia. Some of the work in there went back into the 90s and was shot on film. It was - and is - very nice stuff but you can see which ones were shot on film and, technically, sad to say, they are weaker. I am talking subtleties here, because these are all beautiful images, but digital offers better colour, clarity, dynamic range and resolution (with the notable exception, for resolution, of stuff shot on large-format 4x5 or 8x10) It is certainly true that the overwhelming number of iconic images in the 20th century were shot on film (how could it be otherwise? Digital didn't reach mainstream use until the late 90s and most magazines didn't go to digital until the early 2000s) and that those images resonate powerfully today and will continue to do so. That they do is due to the artistry, humanism and compositional talents of the photographer, not to any technical superiority of film or the cameras of the day. Many of the great shots seem grainy and soft - some almost unacceptably so, today - but that does not detract from their power. But neither does that make film a technically superior medium to digital. Also many of those iconic images we might be thinking about - and a special mention here to Ansel Adams - are the product of much manipulation in the darkroom, easily the equivalent of what a modern digital photographer would do on his desktop with Lightroom or Photoshop. Some people may find that their involvement with processing film, the chemicals and darkroom work and the slowness with which images are created with film gives them a deeper satisfaction and sense of creation, but that is within them. Nothing bad or wrong with that, but it is not absolute or universal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 9, 2015 "Show me the money". Where are your examples of the like for like comparisons showing digital to be superior? I don't doubt you are right in that 'state-of-the-art' digital can out-perform middle-of-the-road film camera. But then we are talking £2000 (film) verses £5000 digital. If there was a digital camera or phone available that could out-perform a 6x7 medium format camera under £2500 I'd probably be interested in buying one, but I doubt that digital camera exists. That 6x6 camera I pointed out, carries more detail/colour depth than any digital image produced from a phone or camera I have seen, at what I would describe as an "affordable" price. (Though frankly, I doubt many spend £2500 on a camera and one lens.) As for the allure of film or the allure of digital ... Clients want instant gratification usually, if not always. Digital provides that in a way film seldom could. Polaroid was useful (I have read Parkinson used it rather than a light meter) but was messy and small. Could you imagine a picture editor on set now, being told they'd have to wait 24 hours to see the results of a shoot? The photographer's feet wouldn't touch the floor. I'm happy you are happy with your equipment, your work, and your income. You have mastered all the barriers and obviously have a successful career based on your expertise, and to that I bow. However, without a successful career to fund the sort of investment you have made, film still provides a more cost effective medium for superior image quality in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 9, 2015 Report Share Posted November 9, 2015 I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Clients, at least the ones I work for, one of which is world famous for its demands on photographers and the quality of the images they use, are not about instant gratification but about quality in the most absolute sense. They were late in moving to digital, not touching it until 2003 but now use nothing else. Time is not a factor. Just image quality - which includes, I would add, emphatically, the artistry, compositional sense, integrity and journalistic story telling ability of the photographer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 9, 2015 11 hours ago, Shyheels said: I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Clients, at least the ones I work for, one of which is world famous for its demands on photographers and the quality of the images they use, are not about instant gratification but about quality in the most absolute sense. They were late in moving to digital, not touching it until 2003 but now use nothing else. Time is not a factor. Just image quality - which includes, I would add, emphatically, the artistry, compositional sense, integrity and journalistic story telling ability of the photographer. While Victorian explorers and the frontiersmen of the America's had no choice about it, I'm surprised a 4x5 or 10x8 'plate' (film) camera isn't used then? Short of stealing something from Hubble Inc, I doubt even you would suggest the detail available from a digital camera would trump one of these? And I don't know we are really disagreeing either. I'm resigned to your experience in this matter, in that the image quality from a £5000 (to £7000) digital system might be superior to say 35mm film stock. I struggle to image it would be better than 6x7 but I'm okay with being ignorant to that being the case. I will do what I can (when I can) to find out more. But even a full size CMOS processor isn't the panacea of the imagining world. I have used slow B+W film in a 6x7 camera and at the enlargement sizes I used (3ft x 4ft) I failed to see any indication of grain at all. Nada. Put plainly, that film/camera combination could out-resolve the human eye, and any quality above that, is an academic exercise. The C330 (or Yashica 124) with the same film could likely produce a very similar quality image, for significantly less money than the Mamiya 67 ProS, and could certainly take on digital cameras priced under £1000. So far, you have not challenged this claim? I believe digital works at the mid to low end because it's easy/quick/cheap. I don't think it's accurate (as shown in the direct comparison above) and I'm pretty unconvinced on quality too. That said, I've done nothing with RAW images, and it maybe time I did. I have taken on-board your comment regarding .jpg stripping 80% of the image data, and will try some like for like comparisons. As detailed elsewhere, I own a Lumix G5 (as well as 2 off FE2's and a Mamiya 67). Some time ago I bought an adapter that would let me use my Nikon lenses on the G5. I also have a rather pretty girl waiting for me to do the portraits I had asked her to sit for. If only I was a better time manager? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 10, 2015 Report Share Posted November 10, 2015 (edited) I think you really should shoot RAW or at the very least acquaint yourself with the possibilities it opens up for post processing. I really do not know much about the capabilities of low and medium range cameras, at least not first hand, but all of the pro grade cameras I use or am familiar with are superior is every respect to film. Again I go back to client demands. If film were better, they would want it.. They don't. There is just no demand. the convenience of digital is nice, but in advertising, art, architecture and longer term magazine orojects there are no rush deadlnes. Clients would be more than happy to wait for images to be processed if it was a matter if getting truly better images. That they go with digital over film speaks for itself. i too used to have medium format cameras - a Pentas 6x7 and a Mamiya RB67. Loved em both. Sold them both long ago, too. Most other pros I know sld their medium format gear too. Digital is just better and where medium format sized shot are required, digital medium firmat such as Phase One, Hassleblad etc fill the bill. Almost nobody uses film. large format, 4x5 and 8x10, for landscapes and studio, can outperform digital on resolution but that is because there is very little cmpetition at that end of the spectrum. I have been in this game a long time, and just cannot think of any good reason to shoot film any more other than nostalgia. And nostalgia, as they say, ain't what it used to be! :-) Edited November 10, 2015 by Shyheels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 11, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 As before, I've taken your advice on-board. With no (realistic) limits on equipment budgets, I see no reason to expect film to out-perform digital, and it certainly is considerably more flexible in just about every respect. I'd like to see a portrait using digital that produced 'warm skin tones' and good (read realistic) contrasts. Not processor controlled over-exposure where the darkest/blackest object is a shade of grey. My shtick in this matter, remains at the other end of the money scale in terms of price/performance, where I obviously have more (frustrating) experience. Again, I will endeavour to use RAW and see if I can't get my Nikon lenses fitted to my Lumix. I don't need auto-focus for portraits, and where I need speed, the camera has a fairly fast pancake lens anyway. (If ever there was an Americanism ..... ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 11, 2015 Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 I believe the portraiture prizes announced yesterday were shot on digital... Auto focus is handy for some things, but being an aficionado of Zeiss lenses I have learned to get by without it. I learned on manual focus anyway, back in the 70s, and have no problems with it. The throw on the Zeiss lenses is nice and long and beautifully controlled and when used with live view on landscapes is incredibly precise. Pin sharp. The nicest thing about 'fast' lenses, especially for portraiture is the soft creamy bokeh you get when you shoot wider-open. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 11, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 3 hours ago, Shyheels said: The nicest thing about 'fast' lenses, especially for portraiture is the soft creamy bokeh you get when you shoot wider-open. Eh? While walking around my (then) local town centre about 30 years ago, I was testing a slightly longer lens than I was used to, by just 'clicking' at anything of interest, to familiarise myself with the focussing action. I never point a camera without film, and at the time I was processing B+W stock on a weekly -if not daily- basis. I have a picture of a child standing on one of those 50p-a-go electric rocking horses, at the time, found outside some shops to keep children busy while mum or dad popped inside. I didn't even remember taking it until I processed the contact sheet. It's probably the best example of differential focussing I've ever taken. Cartier-Bresson would be proud. Amongst all the distraction of a market place, a concrete stairway immediately adjacent to the electric toy, the only thing in focus is the child and the toy. It would have been shot on a Nikon 105mm lens at f2.8 because the stairway and the balcony above made the lighting very poor. That child probably has children of his own now, older than he was in that photo. If I published it on the Facebook web site for that town, I wonder if he would be recognised? I doubt I'll ever know. I also like the effect mirror lenses give background highlights, lots of little circles .... Quite pleasing to my eye. It's like having the background covered in soft-focus flowers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 13, 2015 Report Share Posted November 13, 2015 Bokeh is the creamy quality of the blur of an out of focus part of an image. It can be quite beautiful in the way it lifts the subject away from the background. It is from a Japanese artistic term. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 13, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 13, 2015 My international linguistic skills ended when I chose not to take French in the third year. Didn't actually do any in the second year, but I'd learned enough in my first year to get a decent pass in the end of the second year exams, much to the astonishment of myself and the French teacher. At junior school I used the little French we had been taught to ask if a fellow pupil could use the loo. Teacher was impressed. While on a motorcycle in France, and ever-so-slightly-lost, I asked one of the locals in French, where the big white mountain was. Impressed with my question, she gave me directions in the fastest French I've ever heard. I think I made out 3 of the 50 words spoken. Since I obviously had impressive skills with French ladies, it's one of my life's regrets I didn't learn a second language. Giving what I might usually consider a technical fault an exotic name, seems a bit la-de-dah to me. (He's says, slightly tongue in cheek ). As I'm too old to learn a new foreign word, I'll have to stick to out-of-focus, but I appreciate the effort in trying to educate the ineducable. Besides, the term 'differential focussing' seems much sexier. I think I did mention how mirror lenses (which might be 'old tech' to many) produces attractive little doughnuts for out of focus background highlights. Creamy doughnuts then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyheels Posted November 14, 2015 Report Share Posted November 14, 2015 Bokeh not a technical fault, it is a natural effect - part of the laws of physics and optics. If you shoot wide open - say, f1.4 - you will have a shallow depth of field. That depth of field will deep as you stop down the lens so that by the time you get to f16 everything will be, more or less, in sharp focus. The 'quality' of the blur you see in the backdrop - the bokeh - when you are shooting with a narrower depth of field is subject, as with anything artistic, and varies from lens to lens with better glass giving you a softer creamier, and generally more desirable bokeh. I have had some amusing happenings while asking directions in other languages. I remember asking about catching a train in rural Hungary and being unable to comprehend a single word of Hungarian was bemused when the person who was trying to be helpful believed he could solve the problem by speaking s-l-o-w-l-y in Hungarian. I laugh, but I do the same thing myself... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFreddy2 Posted November 14, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 14, 2015 4 hours ago, Shyheels said: Bokeh not a technical fault, it is a natural effect - part of the laws of physics and optics. If you shoot wide open - say, f1.4 - you will have a shallow depth of field. That depth of field will deep as you stop down the lens so that by the time you get to f16 everything will be, more or less, in sharp focus. Yes. I've known this since about 1985/86. Though I'm not 100% sure an f1.4 lens focussed at infinity would have a particularly shallow depth of field (in measured yards/metres at the focal point.) To someone who sees anything out of focus as undesirable, it's a technical fault. There are some quite well known portraits of of famous, and less famous people where differential focussing has highlighted their eyes (as is normal procedure) and a good deal of everything else is out of focus. Not for me. In macro photography there are times when even f32+ won't produce a completely focussed subject, and that is an accepted handicap of the genre. In portraiture, the only time I want a shallow depth of field, is when I want to isolate the subject from anything that detracts from what I'm trying to say about the sitter/subject. From the web .... While you might be inclined to 'dress up' the physical limitations of lenses (distance vs aperture size) I'm fully aware of what it is ... A limitation. Where light (or media response speeds) prevent a completely 'in focus' image owing to the use of a wide aperture, the result can't be dressed up as something desirable, because the whole point of a £2000 lens is to get everything in the image; pin sharp. There is a whole genre of painting called "abstract", that is worth millions, if not billions. It's all bunk to me. While Picasso was undoubtedly a great artist ... the work he is famous for, is for me mostly an eye-sore... I've obviously a traditionalist. And slightly proud of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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