I was at the Safeway parking lot with my children when my wife called. “Don’t come home without new photos of the kids for my parents”, she said in a scarcely firm voice. Knowing that I could not put off her request any longer – it was about the 10th time she had asked. I spied a little piece of grass and 2 camera clicks later – my task complete. Sometimes things work out -or did they. Either way my in-laws loved them. See the results below.
In case you missed this video you can see it here.
Tom, you are absolutely right about the focus. My wife wants our kids’ photos tack sharp from front to back while I’m good sometimes with just the eye closest to the camera in tight focus. In this case, I wanted to hide background elements and give the photo a little glamour too. So, I went in as close as the lens allowed and still use auto focus, about 1.5 feet. Give it a try and let me know how it works out for you. Thanks for the support and I’ll try slowing down a little and pay closer attention to my grammar.
I imagine that she didn’t like the photo of your daughter because parts of her head are out of focus (which is a little surprising at f4 — it looks more like f1.8-2ish). Personally, I like it. I appreciate your efforts to help/educate here, but perhaps you should have somebody edit your posts for grammar (we can all use an editor).
We got a question regarding the Bokah effect and blurring I thought share here. Love to see your Bokah.
The Bokah effect creates beautiful out of focus backgrounds that wonderfully draw attention to your subject. I personally tend to think of Bokah as a specific style of blurring that one might describe as circles of light. Outdoors I find that a good way to get this effect is to use backlit trees or plants as my background. Good Bokah vs.bad Boka a great debate.
Hey Danny, I went back to look at the meta data to see what the focal length was in each photo as I didn’t remember changing it. I do recall going in much closer for my daughter.
My guess is the delta resulted in the dreaded focal creep. I do wish there was a option to lock it. I thought when Nikon announced the 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED with a locking mechanism it would let you set it and lock – unfortunately it only locks all in or out. So, I just tape it where I want it. I am loving the idea of the new Canon 7D Studio Version with its locking features. But it does not manage the lens. Great for environments where I want to hand an assistant a camera, like at school shoots, and not worry about them changing anything.
Son ISO 320 93mm f/4.0 1/100 4:49:41 PM
Daughter ISO 320 96mm f/4.0 1/250 4:51:35 PM
Lens: 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Focus distance to the subject would be the only other variable.
Your daughter is shot with a longer focal length lens.