How does she get this background so "creamy"?

[Leftyplayer]

Makena | 9 days new | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[TPF Sponsor]

[kundalini]

I didn't see anything in the comments to indicate what this photographer shot with, but at the end of the day, that quality of rendering smooth, creamy out of focus, while maintaining such sharp focus is a product of the lens used.

[K8-90]

I can't remember where, but I have seen some SOOC baby shots similar to this. While the lens choice is primary, much of the background is a product of heavy post processing. Lot's of stamp and healing tool, and some gaussian blur. This may or may not be how this photographer does it though.

[Neil S.]

Most likely one of the Nikon or Canon cream machines.

Like these:

Nikon 85mm 1.4D/G
Canon 85mm 1.2L

It’s hard to tell exactly, but it looks to me like it may have been in the f/1.8-2 range. That means it could be one of many different lenses.

It was probably shot at f/2 or wider.

Here’s one of my son with the 85mm 1.2 wide open. As you can see only the forehead (and hair there) is in focus, with the rest of his face going out of focus including the eyes!

The focal plane is razor thin at f/1.2, and you have to be extremely careful about your focus when shooting like this. Being honest I actually missed my focus here, but it serves as an excellent example of what a shallow depth of field looks like.

In some ways it’s an amazing lens, and in others its actually pretty poor. It’s a special use lens, and I have a love/hate relationship with it. This is very different from my 70-200 which I love in just about every way.

1)

[usayit]

I do agree that the OOF background and how "creamy" it looks is largely due to the characteristics of the lens; not just how fast (large aperture) but also its inherent design. I've seen some crazy fast lenses with dizzy odd looking bokeh and OOF. There are some slower lenses that also produce really nice looking backgrounds.... usually telephotos. One that many Canon shooters like as a bargain portrait lens of sorts is the 100mm macro.

As for the photographer linked in particular, I also see a bit of "help" via post process work.. at least to my eyes. A few photos down, there is a baby in a wicker basket on a light colored wooden floor. To me the DOF fall off drops off rather quickly. A lot more abrupt than I'm used to seeing. Its also deeper in focus field in front than the rear which could possibly be the focal point is the front corner of the basket. I also see the darker texture of the grain of the floor (dark seem between the floor boards) seem to completely get smothered out as it reaches to the background while other lines in the floor retain a little bit of visibility towards the rear. One floor joint seems to disappear as it passes near the back of the baby and "reappears" (albeit very oof) towards the top of the frame.

It doesn't much matter... just as long as the photographer achieved the results they were looking for and/or whatever satisfies their customers.

[mc1979]

This is more likely done mostly in pp. There are tutorials on how to do this, I've read a few that have been on newborn photographers blogs. I can't remember what all steps, but it's easy to find on Google. I'm not saying her lens didn't help, it most def does...I just know that in newborn photography this look is a technique used in PP.

[IgsEMT]

Look at Keri Meyers photography ( hope I spelled it right). It's processing.

[Schwettylens]

Extremely shallow DOF will do that I think.

[Scatterbrained]

A longer, fast telephoto will give you that effect, something like a 135 or 200 f/2, otherwise you could achieve it in post but that seems like a waste of time to me; however, I do know a guy who gets that kind of result regularly while shooting stopped down! He just spends hours in photoshop fixing his images.

[Scatterbrained]

BTW, I don't use any of their plug-ins myself, but I do know that either NIK or Topaz makes a plug in to achieve this effect.

[Leftyplayer]

Neil, that 85 f/1.2 looks amazing, but, yes, I could see how it can cause trouble too.

As I googled myself crazy through tutorials and info, it appears everyone was right ... it's lense, how fast AND PP.

I'll have to check out 125 f/2 (or so) and see if the same effects could be achieved with minimal PP. I'd rather be out there shooting than spending too much time on the computer fixing the shot.

[dakkon76]

As creepy as some of those pics are, she sure uses some great textures. I agree with PP and less with simply using an 85 f/1.2 - because of the extremely thin DOF, you wouldn't have that much of the subject coming out sharp. Likely something like f/2.0-2.2 and then some Gaussian blur to it. Depending on how much the baby is moving, I suppose you could attempt to shoot 2-3 frames at f/1.2 and focus stack them... but that's pretty unlikely

[Neil S.]

Ill be honest and say that I didnt know you could do that in PP.

Looking closer the background does look somewhat "artificial" to me, and I could see this being done in photoshop.

Within inches of the baby the foreground is already going out of focus though, so either they also edited the foreground or it is still shallow DOF due to a wide aperture.

It would seem to me that a pure DOF effect would likely be better, provided that the background was suitable.

Neil

[cameronrbrown]

Ill be honest and say that I didnt know you could do that in PP.

Looking closer the background does look somewhat "artificial" to me, and I could see this being done in photoshop.

Within inches of the baby the foreground is already going out of focus though, so either they also edited the foreground or it is still shallow DOF due to a wide aperture.

It would seem to me that a pure DOF effect would likely be better, provided that the background was suitable.

Neil

Yea I'd say the background was blurred a bit i photoshop, but it's mostly the lens aperture/lighting that work together to create the look

[jaydensmith95]

Thanks to for this information