High(er) Aperture Range

Dikkie

No longer a newbie, moving up!
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Can others edit my Photos
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Some camera's have built-in editing possibilities.
For example: image overlay.

You create some kind of double exposure of your RAW photos, with a RAW as output:
Image Overlay: Combining Images Together In Camera from Nikon



I'm just playing with an idea, it gives probably a bad photo, but anyway...

Situation, at night:
A photo at a wide aperture F1.8, focussed on an object so you have a nice blur in front an on the back of the object.
Combined with, the same photo, but shot at small aperture F16, so you'll have starformations in your street lights and moving vehicles...

If you combine those 2 photos to 1, you can maybe have a nice effect? Maybe both advantages in 1?
You would have a high(er) (non-dynamic) aperture range photo, or something like that (HAR).

Anyone tried this before?
Anyone can show us a photo of this?

I'm going to try it sooner or later when I'm out shooting some night visions.
I'll let you know!
 
What you will get is either:

1) A mess (if you are unable to line up the photographs, which you may be unable to do, even if on a tripod, since the aperture can alter things a bit due to increasing and decreasing lens defects, not just DOF), or
2) A photo where things at the plane of focus are sharp, and everything else gets a progressively stronger soft focus effect (sharp-ish with softer halos) as you move away from the plane of focus

Obviously the only way to find out which is to try it! And post here when you do!



Hm... you know actually this might be an effective way of giving software the data it needs to get accurate depth map information more efficiently, which is something I've been struggling with for a long time. Maybe not, but it's a new angle to think about...
 
Obviously the only way to find out which is to try it! And post here when you do!

Well, I certainly will.
Tried it already in daytime for fun, and the result was a sharp image with blurry surfaces in it that were sharp in some transparant kind of way. You could immediately see that there's something wrong with it, kind of effect or so...

Anyway, it's not the same result as -for example- overlapping 2 images in photoshop, and then (not obligatory) eliminating the bad parts.
 
Hm... you know actually this might be an effective way of giving software the data it needs to get accurate depth map information more efficiently, which is something I've been struggling with for a long time. Maybe not, but it's a new angle to think about...

I was already looking for some bracketing functionality... but instead of changing the exposure in the images, I'd like to change the aperture.
Just a silly idea :)
 
Last edited:
I never bother with ANY in-cam processing of ANY sort. I prefer to do it with nice, big color-corrected, pixel-level-accuracy monitors rather than that tiny, itty-bitty squint-my-eyes screen on the camera.

I was already looking for some bracketing functionality... but instead of changing the exposure in the images, I'd like to change the aperture.
Just a silly idea
icon_smile.gif

Are you asking about focus stacking?
 
I never bother with ANY in-cam processing of ANY sort. I prefer to do it with nice, big color-corrected, pixel-level-accuracy monitors rather than that tiny, itty-bitty squint-my-eyes screen on the camera.
I like big screens too. Don't like tiny, itty-bitty squint-my-eyes screen on the camera neither.

But it's just a push on a button on your camera so he automatically creates you a raw file of what you want, you don't have to look for the details on your tiny screen, that's for later when postprocessing them on your computer.

Are you asking about focus stacking?

No, not really focus stacking. Looks like it, but not the same thing I'm thinking about.

Well, I don't
 
Focus stacking is shifting the focus along to multiple points then adding together all the in focus bits. He is asking about maintaining one point of focus and bracketing the aperture, then merging them somehow.
 
I don't think you will get the result you want.

I do a similar thing with multiple exposures sometimes, but instead of changing the aperture, I slightly defocus the second image. It gives a sort of 'softening' effect.

Like this:

2013011010 by J E, on Flickr

I think changing the aperture would have mostly the same effect.
 
Yes, it will look like that ^ BUT not uniformly over the whole image like that. Instead, the point of focus will be crisp, and it will look more and more and more like that (noticeable differences between crisp and halo) as you move to objects further away. Which would be a bit weird

Assuming you can line up the images in the first place.

Also note that a slightly cheaper but less nice way of doing the above thing with the doll is to duplicate to a new layer in photoshop, Gaussian blur it to maybe 8-10 pixels, and then make the blurred layer 30% transparent or so. Mix exact pixels and transparency to taste. It won't look exactly the same, but also doesn't require a tripod or futzing around lining things up, so *weighy hand motion*
 
I was playin' the DOF last days again... After some years, I wanted to give it another try.
And I came up with this result right below:


Lost Perceptions From This Point Of View
by Dirk Desmet, on Flickr

I shots one at F11 or so, and one at F 1.8.
The shot at F11 focussed spot on the subject, the street lights give star effect this way.
The shot at F 1.8 gives a shallow DOF as I manually focussed it much closer from the point where I was standing.
Both framing the exact same direction/composition.

When I both had them on the computer, I put them both over each others in layers, and I masked the parts out which I didn't want to see. In this case, I only wanted some shallow DOF on some specific street lights, or near the borders of the photo.

Ok, it technically is not supposed to be true photography, more a composition or collage.
However, to me... the result looks like a regular long exposure night photo again, but with some twist of magical atmosphere.

What do you guys think about this kind of technique?
Do you guys sometimes use such things aswel?
 

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