The Shutterbug Society; Activity #3: Ask and Answer

[ed1nburgh.livejournal.com]

Activity: Ask and Answer
Points: 10 points participatioon
Dates: NOW until Thursday, July 1 at 22:00 PDT.

Details: Since this is a photography club and we have members of all skill levels, for this activity, you're going to have the opportunity to ask or answer photography questions you've always wondered!

FOR QUESTIONS: Be sure that it is a question of substance. Asking, "What's a camera?" will not get you points, but asking something of more substance, such as "What is the rule of thirds?" or "What's the difference between digital cameras and film cameras," will count towards points. If you are only planning on asking questions, you must ask THREE questions to get participation points.

FOR ANSWERS: If you know the answer to a question you see, feel free to respond! In order to get participation points, you must answer one question with at least five, complete sentences. It is encouraged that you post an example of what you're talking about, to make your answer totally clear.

Of course, feel free to go beyond the minimum! You may ask more than three questions or answer more than one, or any combination thereof.

If you have any questions for me, please respond to the thread below!

Shoot things, legally! Join The Shutterbug Society today!

Comments

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

The best way is with a lens capable of a very narrow depth of field and a wide-open aperture. This is usually how macro images are done. The smaller the aperture, the deeper the depth of field, and vice versa. But mainly, this is handled in the lens, and if you are using a macro lens or extension tubes, you'll see this in action better thn it can be described. (Ideally, you'd set up a coin or something and play with the same image on all different aperture settings to get a feel for it.)

Another way is to use a center spot filter, which is a kind of a diffuser designed to do this specific thing. You can make a diffuser by spreading vaseline thickly around the edges of a UV or polarizing filter, making it lighter toward the center, but this is messy and hard to control. Typically, a center spot filter has a hole in the middle (http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/filter/filter-cspot-hoya-icon.jpg), and the filter radiates out from the hole with increasing blur to the edge. A diffusion filter may do the same, but with no hole /focus spot, or else with a more subtle one.

Yet another way is with a lensbaby (http://www.lensbaby.com/), which is a cheap lens (relatively) that creates extreme sweetspots of focus and extreme "fall away" or focus. You can bend them, too, which is fun -- it's like a lens on an old bellows, and you can bend them around to move the sweet spot and change the fall-away.

You can also do it in photoshop, using a layermask, described here:
http://www.photoshop911.com/tricks/focus_falloff/