As I said yesterday, experimenting around Saltaire with a wide aperture on my lens was quite a learning curve. When I was just taking a broad street scene, as above, having an aperture of 4.5 instead of my usual 11 or so had a negligible effect, the far distance looking just a little hazy.
With the same aperture of 4.5, if I focused on something much nearer but separated some distance from the background, like this rose, the blurring effect was much more pronounced
When the background isn't so far away from the point of focus (as above and below), the blurring effect is there but less strong.
When you focus on something further away (below, the focus is on the lamp), again the effect is reduced.
On this last one, I focused on the artichoke head, beyond the railings and the blur on the railings is very pronounced. I don't generally like images with a foreground blur, finding them a bit uncomfortable to view.
All good fun and quite educational. I should do more such practice and I'd be a better photographer but I usually just set the basics, point and shoot. I'm not generally one for faffing about!
Good fun for us, too! Thank you for sharing your practice shoots, they all have something that makes you pause and look a little longer.
ReplyDeleteThe wide aperture seems more realistic to my own vision. I remember first seeing the photos of zoom shots, where the distance was folded into the foreground by being in focus. i just knew that wasn't real.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting experiment.
ReplyDeleteWell done I love the last one with the forground blur. Even the iPhone can do that now. Just by using the portrait choice and then you can blur it as much or as little that you want. In other words you can adjust the f stop AFTER you have taken the photo.
ReplyDelete