Depth of Field

I've posted several shots below, all taken in quick succession. The only difference from one exposure to the next is the depth of field was varied (while keeping the overall exposure the same, of course) from f/1.8 to f/11. As you can see, this simple change had a drastic effect on the overall image. In the f/1.8 image, only one or two of the flowers are in sharp focus. In the f/11 shot, much of the background becomes discernable instead of an abstract blob.

This particular composition is ideal for this topic because it features a colored foreground subject against a monotone background. This splash of color on the foreground subject provides an ideal visual cue that allows you to really see the difference in relative sharpnesses.

(In case you're wondering, the appropriate aperture in the image below in my opinion would have been somewhere between f/3.5 and f/6.3. If I had shot this for optimum effect, I would've preferred the busy and distracting background as blurry as possible, and I would've accepted a bit of blur on the furthest yellow flowers to get it. The f/3.5 shot is acceptable, but I feel a bit more DoF would've improved it without bringing too much of the busy backdrop to life.)


Depth of Field Tests
Canon 20D, 50mm, 1/1250 @f/1.8, 1/400 @f/3.5, 1/100 @f/6.3, and 1/30 @f/11, ISO 100

Photographic Composition Site

Found a great site on photographic composition and thought this'd be a great opportunity to see what that link box does here on blogger... :-)

Cross-Blogging

Ok, I better do this before I forget...I have my blah-blah blog over at LiveJournal, and I want to make sure I have the links cross-posted so I--and everyone else--can easily jump back and forth. So here goes:

severoon's musings.

At the Train Station

At the Train Station
Canon 20D, 50mm, 1/100 @f/1.8, ISO 1600

This is a test of Picasa and Hello working together with Blogger to let me upload pics to my blog here. And it seems as though it worked! Yay.

First Post

I'm thinking of starting up a blogger blog...and this is my first test entry. I've been blogging over at LiveJournal for a while now, but I'm thinking of switching to this place for a couple of reasons. First off, it's google, and google's company motto is "Don't be evil." You've got to respect that.

Secondly, I recently bought a new toy, my Canon 20D dSLR camera. Blogger here apparently dovetails with Picasa, google's photo organizing software, as well as hello, some on-line photo publishing service thingy. So I've decided if these things are all they're cracked up to be, it might be worth switching. So hello hello, blogger, and first post!