After seeing this link via digg.com, I decided to try my hand at the technique with an archive photo that could use a little sprucing up. The original of course had full depth of field. This photo could obviously benefit from cropping but I chose to show the original size to highlight the DOF effect. I could increase the lens blur but it started to give a kind of Viewmaster effect I didn’t like.
Unfortunately all of the photos taken on our ‘02 Hit ‘n Run European Tour suffered from my lack of digital photo knowledge. I never set the resolution so the default web settings (72dpi, 1280×960) were used. Also, my plan to upload images to the web to free up room on my puny memory card were foiled by a lack of resources in Europe and my kit bag. I ended up being real stingy with the number of photos taken to save for the next city and the next city and so on. As a result our last city visited, Rome, had the most photos which was still far too few. I guess we’ll just have to go back.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
This is pretty cool. Venus really pops here, much more so than if you’d left the DOF alone. Did that camera have enough flexibility to allow you to manipulate DOF to get the shot to look that way in-camera? Compare this snap to the stuff most people shoot on vacation.
All of the fixed lens digital cameras I’ve owned seem to strive for full DOF. You can manipulate the DOF but it’s a lot of fussing with the manual over-rides. The auto settings will give you full DOF unless you’re fairly close to the subject and you use the “portrait” mode. Of course optical DOF is much better than PS tricks but it is much easier to achieve optical DOF with a digital SLR.
That’s why shooting with my wussy digital isn’t lighting my fire. I’d like to have the control I had back in the Canon AE-1 days, but there are so many other things to spend fifteen hundred dollars on. The aforementioned trip to Europe, for one. :)
I don’t know what a DOF is , but I like this version of the pic.