Artificial DOF experimental shots

[theonetruepath]

The milk frother and cuppa both taken with aperture f4 using ambient light.

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z17/theonetruepath/2007-05-31_124657732_R8_S4small.jpg (http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z17/theonetruepath/2007-05-31_124657732_R8_S4.jpg)

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z17/theonetruepath/2007-05-31_132508044_R8_S4ALSCsmall.jpg (http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z17/theonetruepath/2007-05-31_132508044_R8_S4.jpg)

[Al_]

just wondering what you mean by "Artificial DOF" is there something I'm missing here?

[theonetruepath]

just wondering what you mean by "Artificial DOF" is there something I'm missing here?

The DOF you get with f4 close up is measurable in millimeters. So a shot taken with f4 which is in focus from front to back is clearly cheating in some way...

In this case I took a whole bunch of shots shifting the focal plane by the smallest amount I could move by hand between each shot. Then I used a DOF stitching program to assemble all the pics into one frame. The way the program works is it looks for the areas of highest contrast in each frame and blends them all in together (simplifying somewhat).

In this case I could probably have used f22 and got a sharper result for all the interesting bits, and in general you can compose a much nicer shot by carefully picking a plane of focus and making sure the foreground/background is nicely *out* of focus.

However for forensic or scientific or documentary shots the technique can be rather useful.

Can anyone produce a photo which lays claim to being nicely composed in the aesthetic sense and which benefitted from a huge artificial DOF increase?

[pixeljunkie]

is that focus stacking then?

[theonetruepath]

is that focus stacking then?

Yup that's exactly what it is

[pixeljunkie]

ahhh ok ;)
good job then :)

[Al_]

ok now I get it, looks good would be more impressive if you had it in comparison with one normal shot.
I think this style would be best used if you had to take a handheld landscape in low light

[theonetruepath]

ok now I get it, looks good would be more impressive if you had it in comparison with one normal shot.
I think this style would be best used if you had to take a handheld landscape in low light

The problem with that is... you need to use a tripod to avoid moving between shots to make it easy for the software. It might be nice for a focussed foreground subject/out-of-focus midground/ focussed background feature.

Here are three of them, each end and in the middle:

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z17/theonetruepath/DSC_3741small.jpg

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z17/theonetruepath/DSC_3743web.jpg

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z17/theonetruepath/DSC_3747small.jpg