How can i get more DOF?????

I have a 70-200 f4L coming today via fedex and i'm sure with
patience i could get this same shot from 3.9 feet which is it's
minimum focusing distance, but if you check a dof calculator the
dof comes out the same. Say you shoot at 200m/ f10/ from 7 feet,
your dof is 1.6 inches.
but if you shoot 50mm F10 7 feet you get a lot more in focus. Of course the bird will not fill the frame as much but it is a way to do it.

Just going from 100mm to 50mm at 10 feet can makes a drastic difference for F4 lets say.
--
Minë Corma hostië të ilyë ar mordossë nutië të
Mornórëo Nóressë yassë i Fuini caitar.
Un thoron arart’a s’un hith mal’kemen ioke.
Saurulmaiel
 
I do like my images sharp and probably toss out many pics most people would keep, but in this case i'm just looking to get 3 inches worth of dof at 15 feet to insure the whole bird is included in the focus area. This is of course related to sharpness because most of the time the curve of the birds body (the edge) is just outside the dof and starts to blend with the rest of the oof background.

The first step is to admit you have a problem, the second step is to skip the first step!
 
Does depth of field increase by shoving more pixels in the same area? How about a 6mp sensor then the size of the rebels with a switch to turn on another 6 million pixels, of course this would increase noise, but would be pretty cool feature.
 
this was shot in aperture priority at iso200 f/10, 1/125. This
Well, there's the answer right there ... but it brings up a question. Why 1/125??? You got a very sharp photo, but it's amazing you were able to... Anyway, if this was ISO 200, then go up another stop ( the Rebel is still very good at 400 ) and you've got f/14. If you're really concerned about DOF, go to ISO 800 and there's f/20.
shot is fine, but if the bird isn't parallel to me then the tail is
allways out of focus as well as most of the back. I just want the
This is a very good point, but remember that as long as the eyes are in focus, most people won't notice the tail being OOF. It's a great thing to be your own hardest critic, but other people will give you a whole lot more slack when they judge your work.
complete bird infocus with everything else out of focus. Guess i'm
asking to much. I thought you got more dof with the rebel compared
to 35mm film, not according to a dof calculator, is this because of
the 1.6x crop?
I've never used a DOF calculator. I don't really believe in them. Personally, I think a person should watch the relationships between distance and FL, aperture, and ISO, then put these to use and get what they get. You know how stopping down buys more DOF and how zooming in gives you less, and knowing exactly what the numbers are doesn't affect how good this photo is by any means!!

( Besides, where DOF starts and ends is kind of subjective, and even depends on your final print sizse. )

But the Rebel D with it's 1.6x crop does give you wider DOF.
 
I very much agree that the limited DOF (affecting the bird) helps the shot. It is not just the tail, but the top of the head and part of wing. It gives it a three dimensional look. If it the bird was all in the same perfect focus it would look like a paper cut out. The top edge of the head, while loosing focus is still much more in focus than the background so you don't loose any definition. I think it is perfect the way it is.

Al
I do like my images sharp and probably toss out many pics most
people would keep, but in this case i'm just looking to get 3
inches worth of dof at 15 feet to insure the whole bird is included
in the focus area. This is of course related to sharpness because
most of the time the curve of the birds body (the edge) is just
outside the dof and starts to blend with the rest of the oof
background.

The first step is to admit you have a problem, the second step is
to skip the first step!
 
In the case of the TS-E lenses, it's not really the manual focus
that matters, but the ability to use tilt and shift lens movements.
Right; it's not the fact that the lens is MF. You can set any lens to MF. It's the way the lens can bend itself and play with the plane of focus.

With any 'regular' lens, you have a plane of focus, and it's parallel to your sensor ( CMOS chip ). If you're camera is pointed straight ahead, your plane of perfect focus will be like a wall, flat, going up and down and side to side, in front of you. A TS-E lens allows you to tilt that wall forwards, backwards, or sideways (??). How deep the focus goes still depends on how much you're magnifying your subject and what aperture you're using, but instead of the DOF being a plane running parallel to your camera, you can tilt it in funny directions, which can wind up putting all your subjects in focus.

Think of a portrait; usually the eyes are in focus and the ears and nose aren't. With a TS-E lens, you can have the eyes, nose, and ears in focus, and the shoulders a little soft, and the waste completely OOF.
 
I want LESS DOF, or at least the option to have it, you can always stop a lens down more and gain DOF, you do need flash or ISO increase of course.

What you cant do is make a lens have less DOF to create those great looking surreal images

heres a shot from the 85 1.2L wide open in my local shop



without f1.2 that should would of been pretty boring

--
http://www.pbase.com/bigbad
 
He's talking about the TS/E lenses (coming in 28, 45 and 90mm IIRC)
and they allow to control the plane of the DOF and the perspective
distortion. They are MF only and cost an arm and a leg but are
worth every bit...
Actually, it's 24 mm ( not 28 ), 45, and 90. The longer two are f/2.8 lenses, while the wide is an f/3.5. The 90/2.8 is said to be among the sharpest lenses Canon makes ... which is kind of a broad category.

The TS-E series is very expensive ( although they're in line with other L primes ), but an interesting tidbit, according to photo.net, is that Canon takes a loss on every TS-E lens they sell. They do this to fill out their line-up ( for obvious competitive reasons ), knowing that while Nikon has a TC lens, it's pretty long, and having a 24 mm TS-E is an invaluable tool for serious architecture photogs.
 
Stopping down the sensor was probably not the right term, i was
just curious if it's possible to make a sensor that you could
control the depth of field with without having to alter the lens
aperture. making the sensor smaller like in point and shoot
digital cameras increases the depth of field so why not a large
sensor that you could turn off the outside pixels and only use the
center to increase the dof when you need it or just when you want
it. Does that make sense?
no not really, it would only change your field of view. It would
basicaly be a optical crop of your existing photo with the same
DOF, just a crop of it.
This would be an optical crop, but if you put the same crop into the viewfinder - ie if you composed your shot around this crop - you would indeed have wider DOF for any composition/aperture combination.

On the other hand, if you stand back further with the same lens, and then do this crop yourself in Photoshop, you would wind up with the same thing. Wider DOF, at the expense of a lower-resolution photo.
 
What you cant do is make a lens have less DOF to create those great
looking surreal images
Or without certain "flaws," like veilling, that are only present in a small handful of lenses: 50/1.0L, 50/1.4, 85/1.2L, and maybe the 135/2L.
heres a shot from the 85 1.2L wide open in my local shop
without f1.2 that should would of been pretty boring
I like the OOF background here, and I love the way this lens deals with OOF highlights. This is why it's at the top of my list. Although in this particular example, I have to ask about the focus. The 80 in the bag, toward the bottom-right corner, looks perfectly crisp, while the subject himself looks a little soft already.
 
I have a 70-200 f4L coming today via fedex and i'm sure with
patience i could get this same shot from 3.9 feet which is it's
minimum focusing distance, but if you check a dof calculator the
dof comes out the same. Say you shoot at 200m/ f10/ from 7 feet,
your dof is 1.6 inches.
but if you shoot 50mm F10 7 feet you get a lot more in focus. Of
course the bird will not fill the frame as much but it is a way to
do it.

Just going from 100mm to 50mm at 10 feet can makes a drastic
difference for F4 lets say.
--
Minë Corma hostië të ilyë ar mordossë nutië të
Mornórëo Nóressë yassë i Fuini caitar.
Un thoron arart’a s’un hith mal’kemen ioke.
Saurulmaiel
but of course i want the bird to fill the frame.
 
What you cant do is make a lens have less DOF to create those great
looking surreal images
Or without certain "flaws," like veilling, that are only present in
a small handful of lenses: 50/1.0L, 50/1.4, 85/1.2L, and maybe the
135/2L.
heres a shot from the 85 1.2L wide open in my local shop
without f1.2 that should would of been pretty boring
I like the OOF background here, and I love the way this lens deals
with OOF highlights. This is why it's at the top of my list.
Although in this particular example, I have to ask about the focus.
The 80 in the bag, toward the bottom-right corner, looks perfectly
crisp, while the subject himself looks a little soft already.
the subject was moving
 
but of course i want the bird to fill the frame.
The less of the frame the bird fills ( which translates to: the smaller the image of the bird that your lens projects onto your CMOS chip ), the wider the DOF you'll have. Then you pull the shot up in Photoshop, and crop so the bird once again fills the frame; the frame just has less pixels making it up. Which means you've captured less detail on the bird ( and more detail on the surroundings; useless to your photo ), but with a wider DOF.

It's the TANSTAAFL principle: There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. You can get more DOF by stopping down below f/10, but that makes your lens softer because of diffraction. You can get more DOF by cropping, but that means you get a lower resolution picture, but you still have to store a big image on your CF card.

Or you can shoot the bird with a tranqualizer gun, and then blend several exposures for wider DOF.
 
this was shot in aperture priority at iso200 f/10, 1/125. This
Well, there's the answer right there ... but it brings up a
question. Why 1/125??? You got a very sharp photo, but it's
I shot in aperture priority and this is the shutter speed the camera gave me at f/10 and iso200, I of course shot this on a tripod and the bird was kind enough not to move very much, i shot about 8 pics of the same bird at the same time and all but 2 were sharp. I try not to ask the camera why it does what it does because it tends to do it very well. The histogram on this shot was slightly to the left, i ended up adjusting levels by pulling the right slider in and the left slider in, but twice as much on the right slider, i believe they are called the black and white points.
amazing you were able to... Anyway, if this was ISO 200, then go
up another stop ( the Rebel is still very good at 400 ) and you've
got f/14. If you're really concerned about DOF, go to ISO 800
and there's f/20.
shot is fine, but if the bird isn't parallel to me then the tail is
allways out of focus as well as most of the back. I just want the
This is a very good point, but remember that as long as the eyes
are in focus, most people won't notice the tail being OOF. It's a
great thing to be your own hardest critic, but other people will
give you a whole lot more slack when they judge your work.
complete bird infocus with everything else out of focus. Guess i'm
asking to much. I thought you got more dof with the rebel compared
to 35mm film, not according to a dof calculator, is this because of
the 1.6x crop?
I've never used a DOF calculator. I don't really believe in them.
Personally, I think a person should watch the relationships between
distance and FL, aperture, and ISO, then put these to use and get
what they get. You know how stopping down buys more DOF and how
zooming in gives you less, and knowing exactly what the numbers are
doesn't affect how good this photo is by any means!!

( Besides, where DOF starts and ends is kind of subjective, and
even depends on your final print sizse. )

But the Rebel D with it's 1.6x crop does give you wider DOF.
--
http://www.pbase.com/paulyoly/root

 
Another thing that I have noticed, maybe I am imagining things but
it seems to me that film can use a much slower shutter speed to
freeze motion?
I noticed right away that with my nikon cp990 and pentax spotting scope i could shoot at much slower shutter speeds and still get a sharp bird even if the bird moved some, not so with the rebel and my 400mm lens, i need faster shutter speeds. Might have something to do with the sensor size or i might just be imagining things like you.
I have seen film shot of birds in flight that were
really sharp at 1/250s and that was no panning since the background
was not showing motion trace. Now it is hard with my camera to
freeze the bird at that speed. I think that might be due to the
larger DOF and things appear more in focus due to that..not sure.
 
I was saving up for this bad bay until I realized the foolishness of waving around $1400 piece of glass amongst a bunch of sweaty rockers and I came to my senses and got th 1.8 instead. I'm pretty addicted to the 1.8's focusing speed, so I think getting the 1.2 would annoy me since it's so supposedly so slow...

I've never even seen a 1.2 in person though - did it feel pretty slow to focus?
I want LESS DOF, or at least the option to have it, you can
always stop a lens down more and gain DOF, you do need flash or
ISO increase of course.

What you cant do is make a lens have less DOF to create those great
looking surreal images

heres a shot from the 85 1.2L wide open in my local shop



without f1.2 that should would of been pretty boring

--
http://www.pbase.com/bigbad
--

Sam Bennett - Photo Guy, Audio Engineer and Web-Apper - http://www.swiftbennett.com
 
making the sensor smaller like in point and shoot
digital cameras increases the depth of field so why not a large
sensor that you could turn off the outside pixels and only use the
center to increase the dof when you need it or just when you want
it. Does that make sense?
As Daniella points out, this basically amounts to cropping the image, which you're of course free to do. But this has the opposite effect: Any print/enlargement will have to use a greater magnification, which would increase the size of the circle of confusion, actually yielding less DOF.

P&S digicams generally have larger DOF not merely because the sensor is smaller, but because that smaller sensor results in shorter focal lengths necessary to provide an equivalent field of view to a 35mm camera. Because the actual focal length is much shorter than the 35mm "equivalent", the DOF is greater.

Cheers,
Jeremy

--
Jeremy L. Rosenberger
http://users.frii.com/jeremy/
 
I thought the same thing, but its just the white on black that gives the impression of sharpness.

The shutter speed was a little slow as well 1/90th and the guy was in motion. Still pretty impressive for f1.2

not really meant to me a good shot, just trying it out in the store and came home really impressed

--
http://www.pbase.com/bigbad
 
if it had to covers the entire range it was a bit slower, but not super slow, under regular shooting I dont think you'd notice.

Im still torn with the 1.8 myself, it still gets a nice boken and seems pretty good wide open, has faster focus and is ALOT cheaper.
--
http://www.pbase.com/bigbad
 

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