[dadipentak]

You guys think too much.

[normhead]

You guys think too much.

Exactly. And I think too much about other guys thinking too much.

But I'm almost done my morning coffee, time to go do some real stuff, thanks for the entertainment.

It's tough telling guys to stop thinking and start paying attention to what you shoot. They don't want to hear it. Everything you need to know about photography you can learn from that little bar across the bottom of your PP software that gives you ƒ-stop, shutter speed, ISO and focal length, and remembering where your focal point was. It may not be as easy as playing with some app on your phone but in the end, that's what it's about. That way you learn about everything , DoF, rendering, control of fringing and CA, colour contrast, micro contrast. It's all in the image. Some app that focusses on one little part of the picture is next to useless in IMHO. There just are no shortcuts. Learn from you images. Knowledge of photography in a theoretical sense can only point you in the right direction. You have to test everything and believe nothing you don't see, and have a critical enough mined to succeed at that.

Way to often we have folks championing great ideas but producing crap photos. My advice, post photos, give advice to folks who ask how you did it. Stop posting theory and asking everyone else to comment on it. It's your job to verify that what you post is true, with clear examples. Many people fall down in their comparisons because they go with their enthusiasm for a lens or camera body and cloud their judgement to the point they don't make supportable comments. Do your testing so what you say is true can be clearly demonstrated to others, and we have something to talk about.

But don't do that for others, do it for yourself. Nothing will serve you better than getting better at evaluating images, especially your own. That is the big advantage to those of us receiving formal education. We found out what our teacher and 20 classmates thought of our work. Our pictures came aback with circles and arrow and comments. When I see a problem area in a photo I often see the guy who first pointed out to me it was a problem, be it a teacher or classmate, 50 years later. We get way to many promoting various things who just don't see the problems in their own work, making their advice to others pretty much useless.

The only reason for offering advice should be, someone sees an image you did and wants to know your secret. Opinions without proof of concept are worthless.

Photography is complicated enough, you have to learn to efficient methods of keeping it simple. To that end, it's all about the image as it relates to the setting you have in front of you on the camera, , not the theory.

[photoptimist]

Well, after checking this out and reading through Circle of confusion - Wikipedia my conclusion it appears to me this for most people is nonsense because...



My assumption would be there are way to many unknowns to rely on this type of math in the field, the two most glaring being M magnification is usually unknown at the time of shooting as is cropping. Just those two unknowns, which must be known for the formula to be useful make this type of calculation at the time exposure untrustworthy. Whether or not it's more or less trustworthy than the on lens DoF guide is open to debate.

I wonder if the "Max resolution" setting on the camera menus does this type of math for you.

Magnification is always known even if you don't think you know it because its just a simple function of the distance and focal length (unless you are really close, it's approximately f/D). And if you don't know whether you are going to crop the image (with the closest foreground still in the frame) and then still try print it as large as you would an uncropped image, then neither app nor experience will help you.

For most landscape images, you are right that f/8 works pretty well. But Ian's images show that sometimes an image requires the greatest possible DoF but without ruining the whole image with diffraction. A rule-of-thimb photographer would probably not attempt such an image or might experiment with aperture, distance, and digital preview to check near-far focus. Or you can use this app and get a extremely good idea of what near-far distance and aperture is still acceptably sharp across the entire near-far distance range.

---------- Post added 12-15-17 at 08:51 AM ----------

You guys think too much.

LOL!

Any one who takes their camera out of P mode thinks too much!

[Alex645]

Any one who takes their camera out of P mode thinks too much!

Or rather the green AUTO mode

I think the best photographers balance right brain function (aesthetics, spatial awareness, gut instinct) with left brain function (critical thinking, analysis, technique). But this thread is a left brain debate and shows how different strokes for different folks.

[normhead]

For most landscape images, you are right that f/8 works pretty well. But Ian's images show that sometimes an image requires the greatest possible DoF but without ruining the whole image with diffraction. A rule-of-thimb photographer would probably not attempt such an image or might experiment with aperture, distance, and digital preview to check near-far focus. Or you can use this app and get a extremely good idea of what near-far distance and aperture is still acceptably sharp across the entire near-far distance range.

Ya, Ian lost me with his ice foreground. Ice with proper focussing looks impressively sharp. To me it makes or breaks the scene. If he used the software and got that image, I think the software told him the wrong thing. So simply stated, without investigating myself, I'm thinking there's probably nothing useful there for me.

And I'm not convinced that just setting the edge of my hyperlocal scale at infinity and cropping the OOF areas from the image, I wouldn't have a better image. I see what he did with it, but I don't want that. But anyone who thinks it's wonderfull should give it a go. On the first image he posted with the soft background I could have done the same thing by setting the hyperlocal scale so that the nearest point in my frame was in focus. There's only so many settings on a camera you can mess with... if I'm going to do something it will be because I see something that I like that I couldn't do by doing what I'm doing now. Those images don't pass that threshold, and both of them would have been deleted from my hard drive. We just have different sensibilities about these things, so more power to him, but it means next to nothing to me.

---------- Post added 12-15-17 at 11:25 AM ----------

Or rather the green AUTO mode

I think the best photographers balance right brain function (aesthetics, spatial awareness, gut instinct) with left brain function (critical thinking, analysis, technique). But this thread is a left brain debate and shows how different strokes for different folks.

There are some of us who would suggest that to get the right brain functions going, you have to suppress the left brains' tendency to wander off in irrelevant directions.

Personally I spend a lot of time talking theory, but what people like is my images. I'm really happy that way. Although when I think I've just made the most insightful comment ever and no one "likes" it, it keeps me humble. I know I'm a genius, what's the matter with everyone else?

The only possible answer is I didn't explain myself good enough.

I still get thrown for a loop when someone just likes a different style of photography and there is going to be no agreement, even if we both express ourselves completely understandably.

Usually after that type of conversation someone will usually send me a note that says "I think what you think" and I'm sure the other guy does too. We all have different learning styles and learn better from different percentages of right and left brain approaches. It's all good.

[photoptimist]

Or rather the green AUTO mode

I think the best photographers balance right brain function (aesthetics, spatial awareness, gut instinct) with left brain function (critical thinking, analysis, technique). But this thread is a left brain debate and shows how different strokes for different folks.

Absolutely!

What's interesting about photography is that often the right brain has a brilliant idea for a fantastic image but then it needs the left brain to figure out all the technical settings that can make that image. And sometimes the left brain comes up with a cool technical trick (e.g., polarized light to reduce or enhance reflections) but then needs the right brain to find a scene where that trick has aesthetic value.

It's one big buddy system.

[dadipentak]

The truth is my left brain buddy has been mia since kindergarten. I totally respect the stuff you guys obsess about but it makes my head hurt and my right brain just says "forget this stuff" (actually a cruder expression) let's go shoot--it's digital so you can try various settings and perspectives and pp over some glitches and there's always the delete button." It's a good thing I don't have to make money from photography (or break even, for that matter.)

[normhead]

I used to write original calculous proofs when I was 16. Now i don't really remember what that squiggly little ƒ sign means.
It makes you wonder, how bad is this going to get?

I think I might be 20 years from sitting drooling in a nursing home.

I want a clause in my "just shoot me" will that says, if I can't use my camera equipment, just take me out. Don't wait for it to go any further downhill than that.

[Alex645]

There are some of us who would suggest that to get the right brain functions going, you have to suppress the left brains' tendency to wander off in irrelevant directions.

Agreed, and the opposite too. But being in the left or right "zone" only has its cons and pros.

I wonder if there is a correlation between right brain dominant photographers that prefer shallow depth of field bokeh and left brain dominant photographers that prefer great depth of field juxtapositions?

[normhead]

Agreed, and the opposite too. But being in the left or right "zone" only has its cons and pros.

I wonder if there is a correlation between right brain dominant photographers that prefer shallow depth of field bokeh and left brain dominant photographers that prefer great depth of field juxtapositions?

And we'll probably never know, because basically, no one cares about photographers.

Before I die I'd love to see the same scene shot in different styles , different lenses etc. and a poll produced of what , resolution, control of CA , fringing etc. all the things we measure, actually matter to the general publics appreciation of the images. But, I don't believe it's ever going to happen. Who would pay for something like that? And that's the problem with our current research models. If no one cn see a profit at the end of the research, it is never going to happen.

---------- Post added 12-15-17 at 02:05 PM ----------

Agreed, and the opposite too. But being in the left or right "zone" only has its cons and pros.

I wonder if there is a correlation between right brain dominant photographers that prefer shallow depth of field bokeh and left brain dominant photographers that prefer great depth of field juxtapositions?

Ya, the left brain gets all caught up in the "this scene is so beautiful" and forgets it might have to make some technical adjustments to properly capture it. A few times I have returned home and realized I just shot a beautiful sunset with my small bird settings. It doesn't matter how beautiful it is, there's stuff you have to do.

[Ian Stuart Forsyth]

Part one

ANd how is this different than just looking a lens chart, noting where the lens is sharpest and the rate at which it falls off, and shooting accordingly?

It’s not about knowing where the lens is sharpest or the rate if falls off. As I have stated over this thread several times I want to know where diffraction blur, defocus blur and finally the resolution blur all intersect. Why this is important is this directly influences how much you stop down the lens and where you set you hyper focal distance for a given DOF. With also knowing how these blurs interact we can use a model that is a best fit it to a known output size and optimism that based on the cameras resolution, this can greatly reduce shutter speeds for times you are shooting under limited light conditions or as I have shown in the 24mp vs 36mp an increase in DOF without the penalty to captured resolution.

There is really only 3 way you can derive where the intersection of these blurs occur at the same rate. One a user has to map out this intersection of these3 blurs for every minimum acceptably sharp over varying distances, that person would then also have to work that out for every FL that person might use in landscape photography and keep notes on these mapped models. The second would be that the photographer would have to adjust the f/stop, select the best hyper focal distance for that f/stop (which is different than the standard hyper focal distance chart), then check and see if everything you want falls within that DOF. This would have to be repeated over and over until you find this balance. The 3rd and final would be to base the above on a mathematical model that tells you where these 3 blurs equal out.

Lens charts tell you that for most of your lenses they are going be sharpest at ƒ5.6 and fall off from there. So you shooting starting at ƒ5.6 and use whatever Aperture gives you the DoF you want? If you shoot for shallow DoF then you select on how shallow you want it to be.

The problem with this is that when balancing DOF with diffraction and captured resolution is the camera resolution greatly affect how much DOF you can capture. The reason why I state captured resolution it is that this always limits us to how much we stop down the lens in landscape photography.

I'm not seeing how the AP helps or even works. In your example you ended up using an exposure I could have used. I was hoping you had one that was something I wouldn't have anticipated. Going back with a higher resolution camera next year I'd shoot the same settings, and using a 3 step bracket. Then I'd pay careful attention to the images to see what worked best.

The problem is that exposures does not give us a known DOF, and how will you know where to focus based on those 3 bracketed shots, would you even adjust the where the camera focus’s?

I'm not understanding why this has to be so complicated. I can only assume that when you don't use the app, you mess up a lot images.

So weren’t you that made the statement above? So now for you to get the best out of a higher resolution body you would resort to messing up a lot of images to get the correct images? See the app will alleviate how much work it takes to balance the DOF for the scene.

My answer I would be simply to shoot at f/16 and set the hyper focal distance at half the distance from the camera as the year before.

---------- Post added 12-15-2017 at 11:04 PM ----------

Part two

Maybe you could point us to a reference for this. As far as I know DoF is defined pretty much by circles of confusion,

CoC is a mathematical model that defines how a DOF calculator will model DOF, for a give f/stop and focal plane distance, this is based on whatever the users has decided the final output resolution.
Basically with any DOF calculator you must first model and define what acceptably sharp is so that the DOF calculator can formulate a DOF and hyper focal distance. For a standard and most commonly use model is CoC 0.03, so what this tells the DOF calculator is that any resolution being projected onto the sensor plane that falls on at or smaller than 0.03mm will be considers as acceptable sharp for an image that is viewed at that models (CoC) output resolution and viewing conditions. The problem is that many cameras can resolve details that are 10 times smaller than that.

which are going to be the same size regardless or the number of Mega Pixels.

This is correct that CoC model of what is acceptably sharp remains the same. I think you are hinting at CoC the lens projects, If this is what you are hinting at lets differentiate that from the CoC that is used in modeling DOF for the calculator and call it airy disk or diffraction blur.

Diffraction and CA are usually reported by the pixel size, so as pixels get smaller CA and Diffraction become worse pixel peeping. Once you get over the size where CA crosses multiple pixels it does a lot more damage to image resolution. Same with diffraction.

One of the problems many people are under the assumption that after a certain f/stop that increased resolutions at this alleged diffraction limit that you are not going to capture more resolution This really isn’t what happening, take the 50mp camera at f/11 can capture more resolution than a 24mp camera can at any f/stop and that’s well into effects of where you start to see diffraction lessening your captured resolution.
This is why with a camera that can capture more resolution you can capture more DOF.
How this plays out in the real world at very commonly used airy disk sizes we see very different levels of resolution being captured with different cameras resolutions.
This is why it helps to know how diffraction blur, defocus blur and resolution blur relates to captured resolution as this will determine how you will stop down and focus the lens.

[leekil]

With this app, i find myself wondering if it works for anyone. It's impossible looking at EXIF to tell if it's been used. Also, for myself, the idea of making the best of an image my camera can't ade uqtely cover is "it may be the best you could have done but, it's still not printable." One has to ask why one is even taking such images. But then that is determined by the individual as well. AN interesting digression form the topic of hyperlocal distances, but clearly off topic.

I think it does work for Ian, because he cited that he uses the app and they got the photos they wanted.

It sounds like your method works for you, but there are apparently other methods that work equally as well for other people.

[Ian Stuart Forsyth]

For most landscape images, you are right that f/8 works pretty well. But Ian's images show that sometimes an image requires the greatest possible DoF but without ruining the whole image with diffraction. A rule-of-thimb photographer would probably not attempt such an image or might experiment with aperture, distance, and digital preview to check near-far focus. Or you can use this app and get a extremely good idea of what near-far distance and aperture is still acceptably sharp across the entire near-far distance range.

That is my main point. many times I am going into locations where there is some considerable time restrains and how the light changes in a vary short amount of time that I cannot chimp DOF and focus.

What made me revaluate how I use DOF was me going over some of my old slides that showed very well place DOF for the resolution of that film (I like to do this in slide work as its resolution proofed for whatever the size ist viewed at). That had me thinking how did I achieve this (with film), and the answer was in the home made tables based on profiling DOF, the lenses that I commonly use and the conditions I like to shoot and with the film I liked. Now figuring that we live in the modern age with a pocket computer why not exploit this and find out what I need to know with just a glance and flick of the thumb
This way I am left with more time on composition and the art of photography.

---------- Post added 12-16-2017 at 04:23 AM ----------

Ya, Ian lost me with his ice foreground. Ice with proper focussing looks impressively sharp. To me it makes or breaks the scene. If he used the software and got that image, I think the software told him the wrong thing. So simply stated, without investigating myself, I'm thinking there's probably nothing useful there for me.

The problem is that properly focused ice, properly focus mountains and have them both fall in the DOF are very different things

[Alex645]

From time to time, I find myself binge watching either a cooking competition program like Hell's Kitchen or a metal smithing challenge like Forged by Fire.

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a juried photographer shoot out with episodes like "Hyperfocal Masters"? Unlike many youtube videos comparing models or makes, it would be about comparing different approaches by different photographers to a similar theme and situation.

One of my favorite books by Ansel Adams is his Forty Examples where he writes about the before, during, and post of one of his iconic images. With the PF monthly contest, I'd love to see artist statements....more behind the scenes anecdotes of what led to the final results.

[Ian Stuart Forsyth]

And I'm not convinced that just setting the edge of my hyperlocal scale at infinity and cropping the OOF areas from the image, I wouldn't have a better image.

I see that's your DOF management ( crop out that that falls outside of your DOF later, tells me more than enough) makes composing out in the field a rather difficult wouldn't you say

---------- Post added 12-16-2017 at 04:57 AM ----------

On the first image he posted with the soft background I could have done the same thing by setting the hyperlocal scale so that the nearest point in my frame was in focus. There's only so many settings on a camera you can mess with... if I'm going to do something it will be because I see something that I like that I couldn't do by doing what I'm doing now. Those images don't pass that threshold, and both of them would have been deleted from my hard drive. We just have different sensibilities about these things, so more power to him, but it means next to nothing to me.

But we cannot see any of your work, you know where it is difficult to set the DOF not the times where f/8 and be there is ok

If you don't need the app mind telling me at what viewing size does your image need to be viewed for everything to fall in the DOF for that given fstop you have decided? if you can answer that then also tell me what resolution will be capture?This is what that app does

seeing how you never answered my question here I feel this next question will fall also on deaf ears
If you can do everything in your head riddle me this at what f/stop do I need to have 6 feet to infinity and where do I place the hyper focal distance when using a 50mm lens

Here's my answer its simple f/2.8 or f/16 and set my HFD to 15 feet both will give me the same DOF

Again I would live to see how you manage DOF and your expectations. I think that explains more than I need to know

---------- Post added 12-16-2017 at 05:05 AM ----------

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a juried photographer shoot out with episodes like "Hyperfocal Masters"? Unlike many youtube videos comparing models or makes, it would be about comparing different approaches by different photographers to a similar theme and situation.

One of my favorite books by Ansel Adams is his Forty Examples where he writes about the before, during, and post of one of his iconic images. With the PF monthly contest, I'd love to see artist statements....more behind the scenes anecdotes of what led to the final results.

If you ever followed how Ansel managed his exposures, how he applied it to zones and to the DR of his selected film, I wouldn't doubt that he used a method where his own model of DOF was based solely on a resolution of the film he used.