Experimenting with Depth of Field

In a recent issue of National Geographic, there was a cover story about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the city of New Orleans. What made the story stood out for me was the accompanying photographs by David Burnett. Using a large format SpeedGraphic camera set at a very shallow depth of field, he created pictures that took on a fantastic quality making ordinary scenes of devastation seem surreal like a dream or a nightmare depending on your perspective. Quite compelling. This technique though is not unusual and can be accomplish through a standard tilt-shift lens. You can also duplicate the effect through Photoshop as well.

After coming across another article about photography using shallow DOF, I decided to give it a try. Since I do not have the right sort of equipment in doing it in the field, I used a popular technique using Photoshop software to simulate the effect. You can see this handiwork on my Flickr site. It is just a few photos taken from a variety of photosets.

The one limitation I had was that my photos generally do not make great subjects for this sort of technique which works best if you are positioned above a landscape, preferably one without people and have a quality of light that is bright and casts long shadows.

This is something that I will not spend much time on doing but it is a good illustration on what you can with some basic techniques using the Quick Mask tool and gradients.

Filters or Photoshop

When I picked up my hobby of photography, I had to start my collection of equipment from scratch. Starting with the Digital Rebel (EOS 300D) and its basic kit lens, I have added a portrait lens (50mm) and the zoom lens(70-200mm) and a high quality wide angle (17-40mm) to complete the initial set. Along the way, I have additional pieces like a tripod, flashgun with a diffuser and a collection of filters that fit my kit lens.

Using a filter for your lenses seems a bit archaic these days as many of the effects that filters traditionally do (soft focus, special sparkling lights, colour casts) can be replicate through a photo editor like Photoshop. The exception is polarizing filters where their effects are much more complex.

Screwed in filters vs Cokin filters

Starting out with filters, I used the screwed in type. I found them easier to use and carry around. Currently, my filter collection contains neutral graduated filters, a polarizer, a warming filter and a red intensifier among others.

High quality filters are expensive. The red intensifier filter which I use to punch up autumn colours in my landscape photographs cost $55 from B&H photo. Consider that a collection of lenses will have different lens widths, getting a collection of filters for each lens width will run into the hundreds of dollars and may even exceed the retail cost of Photoshop.

However, I made the transition to the Cokin type filters this year as an alternative option. Part of the reason to do so was cost. Using the same filter holder and filters, I could use the filters for all of my lenses with a series of lens filter adapters for the 58mm, 67mm and a 77mm lens diameters for my lenses. That saved me a bundled compared to getting the same filter for each of the different lenses I have.

Taking the shot vs making the image

In the world of photography, there are many debates and opposing camps as there are models of cameras. They range in passion and breadth from the extremely minor to the fundamentals of photography. There are people who pride themselves on using only prime lenses versus zooms. There are those who are Canon fans as opposed to the Nikon fans. There are people who swear by using ballheads on their tripods while others will use only pan head and so it goes.

One of the most fundamental points of contention in photography is how should the photograph you take should be represented. For lack of a better term, I would categorized the argument as taking the shot as opposed to making the image.

At its simplest, taking the shot is represented by a photograph that is unaltered in every way from the moment that the photograph is taken. No cropping, no change in exposure levels, no changes in color. What you shot is what you get. The best kind of example of this sort of photograph is the journalist shot at a moment and then transmitted quickly to a newspaper or photo archive like Getty Images. In this sort of photography, time is of the essence so there is no time to start Photoshop and tweak the image. Experienced photographers learn to crop in camera through careful composition and getting their exposure right.