Shallow focus flowers

click photo to enlarge
I can remember the first photograph that I took where I deliberately sought an out of focus background.  It was of the engraved metal head a processional cross in a church. The camera I was using was the Russian-made Zenit E with its "kit lens" of the day (though that phrase hadn't been invented then), a Helios 58mm f2. Needless to say I took the shot with the lens wide open at maximum aperture from a fairly close distance. I've been reading about the methods that cameras use to overcome shallow depth of field when close to the subject (as in macro photography). Most involve the merging of multiple shots each taken in a different plane of focus. Very clever and very useful if you want everything in focus as some kinds of photography do.

My photography, by and large, involves taking shots where I want a large depth of field but in situations where it isn't difficult to achieve by stopping down; for example when shooting architecture. When it comes to macro photography I rarely want everything to be in focus because this is a discipline in which I like to produce soft, out of focus effects.

Today's photographs are details from a bunch of flowers in a vase in our living room. I could have taken both shots with much greater depth of field, but the dreamy effect of the out of focus areas appealed to me more. The depth of field of the chrysanthemum shot is minimal, with the sharp edges of a couple of petals betraying where the point of focus rested.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1 Title: Lily Stigma and Anthers
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Manual
Focal Length: 35mm Macro (70mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

D.O.F. and O.O.F.

click photo to enlarge

There seems to be some confusion surrounding the word "acronym". It is widely believed to be the use of consecutive initials. I've seen BBC and RSA so described. However, these are initialisms, "a group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter or part being pronounced separately" (OED). An acronym is, "a word formed from the initial letters of other words" (OED). So, CIA isn't one because those three letters don't make a proper and pronounceable word, but AIDS certainly is (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). Confusion arises when we come to words such as radar (radio detection and ranging).  Isn't "radar", we might legitimately ask, almost but not quite an acronym, because it's an instance where the OED rule doesn't fully work? The fact is, that in the attempt to clearly define categories of words we've gone part way down the road to complete clarity by introducing ever more esoteric groupings, but have lost the value of a basic rule, not quite covered every eventuality, and sown more than a small degree of confusion. As this article shows.

Photography, like many other areas of special interest, is plagued by initialisms, acronyms and other kinds of abbreviations, to the extent that when I'm reading an article I sometimes feel the need for a glossary alongside me. It gets worse if you frequent photography forums because there you come up against all of this, but overlaid with examples of text-speak. One that has arisen in recent years is dof, DOF or D.O.F., meaning depth of field. (Whether we should continue to use full stops to indicate abbreviations or dispense with them, in the modern manner, is another subject for another day!) I think this has come about as people who have known only digital photography have moved from the once ubiquitous small sensor digicams to cameras with Four Thirds, APS-C and 35mm sensors. The depth of field of a small sensor is very big so oof (or OOF or O.O.F.), that is to say out of focus areas (also now called bokeh), are more difficult to achieve. With such cameras, if you want lens blur, you tend to have to either get very close to the subject or use a long telephoto. Larger sensors can achieve it in these ways too, but also by increasing the aperture. A consequence of all this is that shallow DOF shots have become very popular, so have large aperture lenses, and the value of a deep DOF - one of the challenges we sometimes struggled to achieve in the days of 35mm and larger film cameras - is currently less valued.

I was reflecting on this as I used my macro lens to take this very shallow depth of field shot of our oriental lilies. I photographed our white ones last year. This year we have red/brown and pink blooms as well as white. Out of the few shots I took this one intrigued me because the OOF areas resemble a liquid - perhaps pea soup - out of which the stigma and anthers are barely projecting.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  +0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On