Aperture question

[Buckster]

Your loins are girded for battle, buck, it no longer matters what I say, you will attack.

Bye.

It was a simple question.

 

[timor]

Experienced golfers just look and know. Their ability to judge distances can be eerie.

Experienced golfers went first through "technical understanding" of what they are doing.. Looks like photographers do not need that. Sorry, my mistake, I won't poop anymore your threads guys with such a silly ideas like self education . New mantra "Happiness By Oblivion". HBO !.

 

[runnah]

Experienced golfers just look and know. Their ability to judge distances can be eerie.

Cool. Now let's relate that to photography, which is what this is all about, after all.

You bill yourself as an experienced photographer. Can you just look at a scene and say, "that tree is 200' away. At f/3.5 at 55mm on this full frame camera, if I want to put that tree at the furthest end of my acceptable DOF, I'll need to focus at 64', which is riiiiight.... there. Click."

I've been shooting for over 40 years, and certainly call myself "experienced", but I freely admit that I certainly can't do it, and don't personally know any photographers who can.

You can't? What a noob!

 

[Rollei12]

I guess for right now I'll keep things simple. Just have landscapes all in focus

Lens as an optical system can focus only one distance. Having all "in focus" is a physical impossibility so this term "all in focus" is wrong. I know, everybody repeats it, it doesn't make it right of true. It is a nonsense which actually doesn't help with understanding the idea of depth of field and perceived sharpness.

Impossibility? I set the aperture to f22. Most everything now will be in focus, granted I focused to infinity or around there....

 

[timor]

I guess for right now I'll keep things simple. Just have landscapes all in focus

Lens as an optical system can focus only one distance. Having all "in focus" is a physical impossibility so this term "all in focus" is wrong. I know, everybody repeats it, it doesn't make it right of true. It is a nonsense which actually doesn't help with understanding the idea of depth of field and perceived sharpness.

Impossibility? I set the aperture to f22. Most everything now will be in focus, granted I focused to infinity or around there....

Unfortunately yes, impossible. You are mistaking depth of field with focus. Conventional wisdom is very often wrong. It is more projection of wishes, than facts.
Here is link with short explanation which I hope will inspire you to do a bit more of reading and studying the nature of optical image.
Depth of Field
You don't have to go far, wikipedia has many short articles about optics like this one:
Focus optics - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
From here you can explore things like depth of field, depth of focus, focus shift etc.
You will discover that setting the aperture to 22 on small format camera is not that good for the sharpness of your pictures. Especially if you are using zooms.
Happy reading mate !

 

[vintagesnaps]

Why didn't you want the mountains in focus, aren't they scenic? Or are you just trying to figure out why you didn't get the same effect in that situation that you could get focusing on a subject that was closer with the background OOF?

The background's going to be in your composition either way, I think it's something you need to think about when you're framing and composing photos. If you wanted the picture to be more about the tree than the mountains, think about how you're framing shots to minimize the mountains and emphasize the tree.

Next time you could take more than one photo, try different ways of framing it and see what you can get. You could write down what you did (not necessarily camera settings but if you changed your vantage point, how you changed your framing, etc.) so when you look thru your photos later you could remember what you did and see how it worked.

 

[Rollei12]

Why didn't you want the mountains in focus, aren't they scenic? Or are you just trying to figure out why you didn't get the same effect in that situation that you could get focusing on a subject that was closer with the background OOF?

The background's going to be in your composition either way, I think it's something you need to think about when you're framing and composing photos. If you wanted the picture to be more about the tree than the mountains, think about how you're framing shots to minimize the mountains and emphasize the tree.

Next time you could take more than one photo, try different ways of framing it and see what you can get. You could write down what you did (not necessarily camera settings but if you changed your vantage point, how you changed your framing, etc.) so when you look thru your photos later you could remember what you did and see how it worked.

I'll answer your questions one at a time!

- I didn't want the mountains in focus at that time because I wanted to focus (no pun intended) on the tree. In that case I thought it would look pretty cool if the background was out of focus. And considering how far away the mountains were, there would be a ton of super-blurry bokeh.

- EXACTLY! I wanted to treat the tree just like a flower, and the mountains like leaves and such further away being out of focus.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Think about how you're framing. If you can't get the background out of focus because the subject is too large and too faraway, frame it so the background is minimized and the tree takes up more space in the frame. It won't be exactly the effect you want but could at least make the picture more about the tree.

As others have said, you may not be able to get the effect you want the way you're trying to do it with the subject and scene you're describing. I think too much is made online of having an out of focus background, think about if it needs to be out of focus. Look at photos by famous landscape photographers.

You could play around with your framing and vantage point and see what you can get. Or you'll have to do like Sharon said (jokingly), go find a smaller tree not so far away to get an out of focus background that you want.

 

[Rollei12]

Think about how you're framing. If you can't get the background out of focus because the subject is too large and too faraway, frame it so the background is minimized and the tree takes up more space in the frame. It won't be exactly the effect you want but could at least make the picture more about the tree.

As others have said, you may not be able to get the effect you want the way you're trying to do it with the subject and scene you're describing. I think too much is made online of having an out of focus background, think about if it needs to be out of focus. Look at photos by famous landscape photographers.

You could play around with your framing and vantage point and see what you can get. Or you'll have to do like Sharon said (jokingly), go find a smaller tree not so far away to get an out of focus background that you want.

Thanks for the feedback. I know a lot of landscape photography has everything in focus and it looks great. It's a genre I like doing.

 

[timor]

Thanks for the feedback. I know a lot of landscape photography has everything in focus and it looks great. It's a genre I like doing.

And again same fallacy. In every picture only something is "in focus" , the rest is out of focus but should be inside the depth of field or maybe "depth of sharpness" will be a better idea for you. And you talk here about sharpness. Sooner you will get the differences between sharpness and focus, better for you as you will be much better in command of your camera and lens. Understanding what you're doing is a key to success.

 

[timor]

Disagree

Why ?

 

[photoguy99]

Squelching my urge to reply. This thread is just going in circles at this point.

 

[timor]

Squelching my urge to reply. This thread is just going in circles at this point.

Apparently "circles of confusions".

 

[Buckster]

Disagree

Why ?

Already explained earlier in the thread.

 

[timor]

Disagree

Why ?

Already explained earlier in the thread.

Oh...
No, wait. You did explain your position and believes on this. You didn't explain the physics forming optical image.
Well, doesn't matter, OP can read something and get better informed, or can stay oblivious and ask questions on forums every time he/she will meet with a problem. Or, eventually, they will make substantial improvements to digital cameras.