Depth Of Field!
When I first started taking photographs one of my main problems was getting the shot in focus. My early cameras had no rangefinder so I had to be adept at judging distances.
Later I learned that using a scale on the lens barrel it was possible to ensure that most of the shot, or perhaps just a selection between certain distances would be rendered in focus. That system seemed to work well, and often was even more convenient, when I acquired more sophisticated cameras, than focussing using the camera range-finder, or the pentaprism of an SLR camera.
Today I don’t bemoan the difficulty in getting a shot in focus, indeed I want the selective blur of a limited depth of field.
Take for example this photograph taken by Mrs Newton, [not really Irem took it]! In the original photograph virtually every blade of grass in the background was in focus as was your hero, and tiny heroine.
It took about an hour to create an accurate layer mask in Adobe Photoshop, and a further half an hour to adjust the small blemishes that inevitably occur between the layers. In other words the photograph took a few seconds to ‘compose’, and the post production took a very long time, just to get the same kind of effect that could easily be obtained using my ‘obsolete’ film equipment when the picture was taken. I suppose this is what they call progress?
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May 8th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
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