Alin wrote:
>Sorry Mike, to me narrow dof is a big loss. And please don't tell me
>you can fix that in Photoshop.
Alin,
I'm not trying to talk you out of your own methods. Honest. We all use what
we need and choose. All I can talk about are my own experiences, and that's
all I'm doing. I wouldn't dream of presuming to say one person's methods are
"wrong" and another's "right." If you can't get the results you want with
one method and choose another, who am I--or who is anyone--to criticize?
> MJ> MACRO work is laughably easy--the camera has a "macro mode" and the d.o.f.
> MJ> is so great that it allows virtually "macro snapshooting." Bokeh is
> superb.
>
> Bokeh? What bokeh can you possibly get at such high dof? Really,
> I thought the limited series defined bokeh here. Now we're supposed
> to give up to this and other insignificant features like sharpness,
> resolution, just for the sake of convenience. Frankly, I don't see
> anything else in your argumentation besides it's so easy.
If you'll look again, I was talking there about macro shooting, where you
certainly do get bokeh. You also get it in portraits where the lens is set
to a longer focal length and the background is further away. The whole head
is in focus, though, not just part of it, and the background blur is not so
extreme.
And who says you give up sharpness and resolution? In fact, I'm getting
comments from non-photographers about how "clear" the pictures are which in
my experience seldom happens with any sort of photography (non-photographers
just don't care about the things we photographers concern ourselves about).
As far as the image is concerned, they can be plenty sharp. In fact, you
control the amount of sharpness or blur. One of the many great features of
Photoshop is the Unsharp Masking controls. I used to joke with Howard Bond
that he was one of the few photographers who could make unsharp masking pay,
because he sold multiple copies of his prints for hundreds of dollars each,
so it made sense to spend the hours of hard work needed to make unsharp
masks. In Photoshop anybody can do the same thing in seconds.
When you add blur, it's like adding spherical aberration to the lens, or any
one of a number of soft-focus filters. And you do this after the fact,
without corrupting the original data. With film, you're locked into whatever
soft focus filter you select when you shoot. Try shooting a picture with a
soft-focus filter and then going back after the fact and making a sharp
picture out of it!
Another great control in PSE is called "fill flash." You can select shadow
areas--even with very complicated outlines--and up pops a slider which
allows you to selectively lighten that area to whatever degree you choose
WITHOUT losing contrast. Wheeee! I tell you guys, this shit is a BLAST.
I would imagine that now we're going to get into a theoretical argument
about resolution, based on numbers. I've never cared for--or given much
credence to--any of that kind of nonsense. I look at pictures. If it looks
good, it is good. If it looks like crap, I don't care how many numbers say
it doesn't--it does.
--Mike
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