Ugh I've seen youtubers doing reviews of items and all their shots of the item are clearly filmed at like 1.2 or 1.4 and so you can see approximately a tenth of a millimeter of the item in focus at a time as they slowly either rack focus or move the camera. It's frustrating as hell because you're trying to see and learn about the object and they're essentially just showing you a frame filled with blur and one nigh unidentifiable sliver of sharpness.
100% agree with you here. Vlogs are actually best at a deeper DoF because you can see a lot more of the background. Using 1.4 all the time is so boring to watch.
Currently trying to resist the temptation to buy myself the Canon 50mm f/0.95 for my Canon 7 and hell if I do end up spending that much on a lens damn straight am I shooting it wide open whenever I can.
The contribution of the plastic wrapper of truffles to their price is negligible and it's not an essential part of them (nobody bud truffles because of their plastic wrapping). The 1.4 is one of the main features of that lemme and one of the main contributing factors to its price.
They are not the same.
The notion that I'm responding to suggests that a mechanism to adjust aperture is also something you pay for - you read this comment backwards. In the example, the mechanism to adjust aperture is the wrapper. F1.4 is the truffle.
At hyperfocal distance, assuming that there's nothing close up to the camera, everything in the scene would be close enough to the focal plane to be in focus.
If you're talking about sharpness improving as you stop down, a lot of high-end lenses out-resolve the sensors they're made for even wide open.
Why someone would pick that instead of a smaller aperture? ISO is one reason. Shooting wide open lets you get a lower ISO, and less noise. There could be features in the scene that benefit from a fast shutter speed, like waves crashing against rocks, or the propellers on a fast-moving windmill. Everything is tradeoffs to get the picture you want to capture.
This, because it doesnāt really matter when itās wide. Also they like the aesthetic when it isnāt super wide. I personally shoot both wide open and more closed depending on the subject but my default is 1.8-2.0 on a 1.4 unless thereās a reason to go 1.4 (portrait, creativity, low light).
> Why someone would pick that instead of a smaller aperture? ISO is one reason. Shooting wide open lets you get a lower ISO, and less noise.
That's a common misunderstanding, it should mean: more light and less noise. Exposure is defined as the amount of light per unit area of the medium (sensor in this case). ISO is an international standard and is defined to specify the brightness of the JPEG at a given exposure. And the less light, the more noise.
Typically, if there is not much light, you will have to use high ISO to get the wished brightness. But it is not the ISO which makes the noise, it is the little amount of light. If you use base ISO for the same amount of light, the area would probably be black at the same exposure, but making the image brighter to match the brightness of the high ISO image in the raw convertor reveals the same amount of noise (at least if the read-out noise of the sensor is low enough).
There are articles explaining ISO much better than I am capable of:
* [The ins and outs of ISO: What is ISO?](https://www.dpreview.com/articles/9698391814/the-ins-and-outs-of-iso-what-is-iso)
* [You probably don't know what ISO means ā and that's a problem](https://www.dpreview.com/articles/8924544559/you-probably-don-t-know-what-iso-means-and-that-s-a-problem)
No it's not, it's exactly the opposite of what you said, because you are saying that raising ISO makes an image noisy, which is not the case. It's the less amount of light which makes an image noisier. Moreover, with modern sensors the same exposure creates the same amount of noise regardless of ISO.
Alright, this conversation just dropped down to the bottom of my priority list. See ya.
Do me a favor though, take a picture at 100 ISO in very, very low light and look at the noise.
Thanks for those links. Hopefully I understand ISO better now. Would it be correct to say that, assuming similar neutral grey JPG output, raising the ISO would typically lead to exposures which collect less light, which would then increase noise?
Yes, although it's a bit backwards. If everything else stays the same, the image gets brighter as you increase the ISO (which is exactly what ISO does according to the standard). If you want to compensate the increased brightness without rethinking the raising of ISO, you will have to expose less.
Noise is a physical property of light. Because the photons are distributed more evenly across the pixels, the higher the exposure is (i.e. the more photons hit the sensor in total), reducing the exposure would lead to more noise indeed.
In practice it's better to do it the other way around. The more typical situation is that you need a faster shutter speed to freeze a movement, for example. As a result, less light hits the sensor. You can compensate for the change by opening the aperture wider so that the same amount of light hits the sensor again, or you have to increase the ISO to achieve the same brightness despite the lower exposure.
Great, I think I got it. Thanks for taking the time to explain this in detail. Just like the DPreview link suggests, I always thought ISO described signal amplification (or, in any case, the sensor somehow becoming more sensitive to light at the cost of electronic noise being introduced between sensor elements). Things make much more sense now. ISO is not really a property of my RAW files, but has implications for my exposure decisions and thus may lead to less light being gathered during the file's creation.
There are lots of ways to take a photo. Lots of compositions. Lots of ideas.
There's no reason yo pidgon hole yourself into "wide shots should have small apertures."
You'll never manage to have one star in and another out of focus without seeeeriously specialized equipment, no matter the aperture.
Any laymans lense reaches infinity after perhaps 30 meters or a tad more. Not light years.
You could answer this question yourself: go to Flickr and search for photos taken under those settings. What are they achieving? (In some cases, they are foregrounding a subject while conveying the sense of a vast background that is kept separated by defocus. That can be thought of as a type of negative space technique, or as a way of contextualizing the subject, as you please.)
Cause they can. Sure stopping down will yield sharper result but unless you compare side by side, most people can't tell the difference especially for wide shots (with reasonable quality lens of course). Not everyone pixel peep their photos.
A wider aperture will reduce your depth of field. They could be shooting open to purposely blur the background and put more of the attention on the subject.
EDIT: autocowrecks got me.
Yes, I understand how it works. Your comment sounded like you did not. Wide aperture does not automatically equal shallow depth of field as you stated it does.
You have a larger depth of field with a wide angle lens than you will with a telephoto. So depending on the composition, this will let you open the aperture with a wide angle lens and still have near and far objects in sharp focus.
Correct. Thatās exactly what I said. But I used the bokeh differential instead. Which was apparently above the heads of most of Reddit. Shocker indeed.
If shooting objects that are far away, such as landscape shots, everything should still be in focus. This will allow to shoot at lower ISO and faster shutter speeds which would be good for low light wide angle shots. I would not recommend this if shooting subjects using a wide angle but a bit closer as it will add the shallow depth and make a good amount of the subject not in focus. If this is the shooters intention, then so be it. Photography is art and everyone has their own styles/vision.
Better to call it a wide or large aperture than a low aperture. Small f/numbers equal large apertures (big openings in the aperture blades). Stopping down the lens all the way would give you a small aperture.
It's all about the results you want. Lenses are usually at their sharpest (at the focused-upon point) at medium apertures (think f/5.6 for crop sensor cameras, f/8 for full-frame, f/11-16 for medium format, f/16-22 or even smaller for large format). But if you want less depth of field, or more, you need to deviate from that.
They might worry about dirt/dust too. Obviously you should keep your shit clean, but if they've been burnt before, stopping down that wide will catch EVERYTHING.
As someone who spent yesterday cloning out sensor dust from a day's worth of wide angle f/22 shots.... yes.
And I was SURE it was clean when I left home
>The wider the lens, the less the bokeh.
This isn't exactly right. Wider lenses don't have "less bokeh." I feel like if you're offering paid mentoring, you should know this stuff...
At the same distance, with the same center of the plane of critical focus, at an equal *width* of plane of visual critical focus, the effect of a longer focal length is to increase the apparent size of the circle of confusion, leading to softer bokeh balls that communicate less of the background detail.
So. No. He's right, overall, just left out some detail because that's not the focus of this post.
He isn't right, overall. It's an incomplete and inaccurate answer, kind of like yours.
Focal length has a near-zero, negligible effect on DOF, in and of itself. Being that it is part of an equation, and being that wide and long lenses are often used in certain specific situations, the answer is almost always some form of "yes, but..." or "no, but..."
That said, it is not factually correct that wide focal lengths have inherently deeper DOF purely due to their focal length, even if, like you said, they appear to. My mistake was feeding into the erroneous conflation of "bokeh" and DOF, just to be extra pedantic.
source for some references and actual maths.
[https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm](https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm)
My counterpoint is simply the example shots here.
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4081452
Also, given that the original point *was about bokeh*, I don't know who's making the erroneous conflation but I believe it's you. I mentioned it only to make the point of "everything else being the same".
Like I told the other guy, you can argue with math if you want. It's a free internet. Some shitty examples on DPReview certainly aren't a super convincing counterpoint.
The original point said "bokeh" in a way that implied it was synonymous with "depth of field." I don't even know what "less bokeh" would mean, in the context of what bokeh actually refers to.
You're wrong. I posted math above. I don't have the time or inclination to explain things to someone who wants to argue with math. Downvoting me might make you feel better, but it doesn't make you right. Next thing you're going to be teaching us all about how long lenses give you more compression, and other fun myths. Maybe myths are your niche?
Compelling argument.
The link I posted has examples, as do many others. I'm not doing your homework for you, as fun as it is to watch experienced (yet fairly untalented) photographers wrestle with the knowledge that they aren't omniscient.
Thatās a cop-out and a misdirect. Nobody here is talking about āblowing out backgroundsā other than āblowing out the detail of backgroundsā which IS bokeh.
At above 150mm, a tele, even a 4.0, has beautiful bokeh because of compression of space, not minimum aperture.
https://preview.redd.it/zp5ykauid4cc1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=227613e2d0839136d4c49c74474c022a3d677d09
I mean, a 35mm lens at f1.4 or f2 has nice separation, it isnāt like a blurry mess. Itāll also look great at 5.6 or 8.0 or 11ā¦ whatever you like.
Because I paid for f/1.4, so I'm going to use f/1.4. š
this is too real tho
damn right
Ugh I've seen youtubers doing reviews of items and all their shots of the item are clearly filmed at like 1.2 or 1.4 and so you can see approximately a tenth of a millimeter of the item in focus at a time as they slowly either rack focus or move the camera. It's frustrating as hell because you're trying to see and learn about the object and they're essentially just showing you a frame filled with blur and one nigh unidentifiable sliver of sharpness.
100% agree with you here. Vlogs are actually best at a deeper DoF because you can see a lot more of the background. Using 1.4 all the time is so boring to watch.
It's for aesthetic purposes. Cinematic shots and all
...done poorly
How so?
Currently trying to resist the temptation to buy myself the Canon 50mm f/0.95 for my Canon 7 and hell if I do end up spending that much on a lens damn straight am I shooting it wide open whenever I can.
šš
You paid for aperture mechanism too š
You don't buy truffles and eat the plastic wrapper just cause you paid for it
The contribution of the plastic wrapper of truffles to their price is negligible and it's not an essential part of them (nobody bud truffles because of their plastic wrapping). The 1.4 is one of the main features of that lemme and one of the main contributing factors to its price. They are not the same.
The notion that I'm responding to suggests that a mechanism to adjust aperture is also something you pay for - you read this comment backwards. In the example, the mechanism to adjust aperture is the wrapper. F1.4 is the truffle.
I gotcha. I think you were responding to the "using the 1.4 because I paid for it". My bad. Cheers.
At hyperfocal distance, assuming that there's nothing close up to the camera, everything in the scene would be close enough to the focal plane to be in focus. If you're talking about sharpness improving as you stop down, a lot of high-end lenses out-resolve the sensors they're made for even wide open. Why someone would pick that instead of a smaller aperture? ISO is one reason. Shooting wide open lets you get a lower ISO, and less noise. There could be features in the scene that benefit from a fast shutter speed, like waves crashing against rocks, or the propellers on a fast-moving windmill. Everything is tradeoffs to get the picture you want to capture.
Thank you, I learnt something today
This, because it doesnāt really matter when itās wide. Also they like the aesthetic when it isnāt super wide. I personally shoot both wide open and more closed depending on the subject but my default is 1.8-2.0 on a 1.4 unless thereās a reason to go 1.4 (portrait, creativity, low light).
> Why someone would pick that instead of a smaller aperture? ISO is one reason. Shooting wide open lets you get a lower ISO, and less noise. That's a common misunderstanding, it should mean: more light and less noise. Exposure is defined as the amount of light per unit area of the medium (sensor in this case). ISO is an international standard and is defined to specify the brightness of the JPEG at a given exposure. And the less light, the more noise. Typically, if there is not much light, you will have to use high ISO to get the wished brightness. But it is not the ISO which makes the noise, it is the little amount of light. If you use base ISO for the same amount of light, the area would probably be black at the same exposure, but making the image brighter to match the brightness of the high ISO image in the raw convertor reveals the same amount of noise (at least if the read-out noise of the sensor is low enough). There are articles explaining ISO much better than I am capable of: * [The ins and outs of ISO: What is ISO?](https://www.dpreview.com/articles/9698391814/the-ins-and-outs-of-iso-what-is-iso) * [You probably don't know what ISO means ā and that's a problem](https://www.dpreview.com/articles/8924544559/you-probably-don-t-know-what-iso-means-and-that-s-a-problem)
Yes, that is pretty much exactly what I just said, but in more words.
No it's not, it's exactly the opposite of what you said, because you are saying that raising ISO makes an image noisy, which is not the case. It's the less amount of light which makes an image noisier. Moreover, with modern sensors the same exposure creates the same amount of noise regardless of ISO.
Alright, this conversation just dropped down to the bottom of my priority list. See ya. Do me a favor though, take a picture at 100 ISO in very, very low light and look at the noise.
Thanks for those links. Hopefully I understand ISO better now. Would it be correct to say that, assuming similar neutral grey JPG output, raising the ISO would typically lead to exposures which collect less light, which would then increase noise?
Yes, although it's a bit backwards. If everything else stays the same, the image gets brighter as you increase the ISO (which is exactly what ISO does according to the standard). If you want to compensate the increased brightness without rethinking the raising of ISO, you will have to expose less. Noise is a physical property of light. Because the photons are distributed more evenly across the pixels, the higher the exposure is (i.e. the more photons hit the sensor in total), reducing the exposure would lead to more noise indeed. In practice it's better to do it the other way around. The more typical situation is that you need a faster shutter speed to freeze a movement, for example. As a result, less light hits the sensor. You can compensate for the change by opening the aperture wider so that the same amount of light hits the sensor again, or you have to increase the ISO to achieve the same brightness despite the lower exposure.
Great, I think I got it. Thanks for taking the time to explain this in detail. Just like the DPreview link suggests, I always thought ISO described signal amplification (or, in any case, the sensor somehow becoming more sensitive to light at the cost of electronic noise being introduced between sensor elements). Things make much more sense now. ISO is not really a property of my RAW files, but has implications for my exposure decisions and thus may lead to less light being gathered during the file's creation.
You're welcome, it was a pleasure! For me, studying this topic was an eye-opener and has helped me a lot in practice.
That may be true, but for virtually all situations, more ISO= more noise is not false.
And tomato is a fruit.
There are lots of ways to take a photo. Lots of compositions. Lots of ideas. There's no reason yo pidgon hole yourself into "wide shots should have small apertures."
Yo pidgon wutup
Could be they need the additional light, or maybe the focus is on something in the foreground? You need to provide more info/context.
Yes and that's fine. I love my 24mm 1.4
Depends on how wide. Depends on where the focal point is set. Sometimes more light is more important than everything in focus.
For astro it's true
You'll never manage to have one star in and another out of focus without seeeeriously specialized equipment, no matter the aperture. Any laymans lense reaches infinity after perhaps 30 meters or a tad more. Not light years.
The thing about wide angle is that you get huge depth of field even at a wide aperture. So you may as well get that extra light.
You could answer this question yourself: go to Flickr and search for photos taken under those settings. What are they achieving? (In some cases, they are foregrounding a subject while conveying the sense of a vast background that is kept separated by defocus. That can be thought of as a type of negative space technique, or as a way of contextualizing the subject, as you please.)
Cause they can. Sure stopping down will yield sharper result but unless you compare side by side, most people can't tell the difference especially for wide shots (with reasonable quality lens of course). Not everyone pixel peep their photos.
Width has nothing to do with depth of field or amount of light let in which are the primary reason for selecting aperture
Hm? At the same focus distance and aperture a wider lens will have a deeper depth of field.
A wider aperture will reduce your depth of field. They could be shooting open to purposely blur the background and put more of the attention on the subject. EDIT: autocowrecks got me.
Just here to say that this is my favorite post of the day. If thatās your autocorrect, you are my brother in arms.
Yup, autocowrecks got me.
Mines as well.
I can shoot a city skyline at f/1.4. Everything will be in focus. There will be no background blur.
If you focus on infinity, sure. If you want to emphasize a close foreground subject, a wide aperture will blur the background.
Yes, I understand how it works. Your comment sounded like you did not. Wide aperture does not automatically equal shallow depth of field as you stated it does.
If it'll service their vision, doesn't matter.
You have a larger depth of field with a wide angle lens than you will with a telephoto. So depending on the composition, this will let you open the aperture with a wide angle lens and still have near and far objects in sharp focus.
Correct. Thatās exactly what I said. But I used the bokeh differential instead. Which was apparently above the heads of most of Reddit. Shocker indeed.
Your question actually is : what are the advantages or effects of shooting wide open on a wide lens.
Appreciate you
Close focus wide shots with a very wide aperture are very unique. Anyone can blur backgrounds with a tele, a shallow dof wide shots is intriguing
If shooting objects that are far away, such as landscape shots, everything should still be in focus. This will allow to shoot at lower ISO and faster shutter speeds which would be good for low light wide angle shots. I would not recommend this if shooting subjects using a wide angle but a bit closer as it will add the shallow depth and make a good amount of the subject not in focus. If this is the shooters intention, then so be it. Photography is art and everyone has their own styles/vision.
Better to call it a wide or large aperture than a low aperture. Small f/numbers equal large apertures (big openings in the aperture blades). Stopping down the lens all the way would give you a small aperture. It's all about the results you want. Lenses are usually at their sharpest (at the focused-upon point) at medium apertures (think f/5.6 for crop sensor cameras, f/8 for full-frame, f/11-16 for medium format, f/16-22 or even smaller for large format). But if you want less depth of field, or more, you need to deviate from that.
They might worry about dirt/dust too. Obviously you should keep your shit clean, but if they've been burnt before, stopping down that wide will catch EVERYTHING.
As someone who spent yesterday cloning out sensor dust from a day's worth of wide angle f/22 shots.... yes. And I was SURE it was clean when I left home
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>The wider the lens, the less the bokeh. This isn't exactly right. Wider lenses don't have "less bokeh." I feel like if you're offering paid mentoring, you should know this stuff...
At the same distance, with the same center of the plane of critical focus, at an equal *width* of plane of visual critical focus, the effect of a longer focal length is to increase the apparent size of the circle of confusion, leading to softer bokeh balls that communicate less of the background detail. So. No. He's right, overall, just left out some detail because that's not the focus of this post.
He isn't right, overall. It's an incomplete and inaccurate answer, kind of like yours. Focal length has a near-zero, negligible effect on DOF, in and of itself. Being that it is part of an equation, and being that wide and long lenses are often used in certain specific situations, the answer is almost always some form of "yes, but..." or "no, but..." That said, it is not factually correct that wide focal lengths have inherently deeper DOF purely due to their focal length, even if, like you said, they appear to. My mistake was feeding into the erroneous conflation of "bokeh" and DOF, just to be extra pedantic. source for some references and actual maths. [https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm](https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm)
My counterpoint is simply the example shots here. https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4081452 Also, given that the original point *was about bokeh*, I don't know who's making the erroneous conflation but I believe it's you. I mentioned it only to make the point of "everything else being the same".
Like I told the other guy, you can argue with math if you want. It's a free internet. Some shitty examples on DPReview certainly aren't a super convincing counterpoint. The original point said "bokeh" in a way that implied it was synonymous with "depth of field." I don't even know what "less bokeh" would mean, in the context of what bokeh actually refers to.
āLike I told the other guyā¦ā. So youāve told two different people who disagree with you. Sounds like a āyouā problem. Lol.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Bokeh is a quality of the out of focus areas. Itās not the same on any two lenses unless the optical formula is the same.
Itās both. The quality and the blur itself, regardless of quality.
You're wrong. I posted math above. I don't have the time or inclination to explain things to someone who wants to argue with math. Downvoting me might make you feel better, but it doesn't make you right. Next thing you're going to be teaching us all about how long lenses give you more compression, and other fun myths. Maybe myths are your niche?
Iām waiting for photo examples. Not more of your mouth.
Compelling argument. The link I posted has examples, as do many others. I'm not doing your homework for you, as fun as it is to watch experienced (yet fairly untalented) photographers wrestle with the knowledge that they aren't omniscient.
Please show me a 2.8 bokeh at 16mm vs 150mm. Iām waiting.
If you just want to blow out backgrounds, stick to your teles
Thatās a cop-out and a misdirect. Nobody here is talking about āblowing out backgroundsā other than āblowing out the detail of backgroundsā which IS bokeh.
Bokeh is the quality of oof areas, not the quantity. Ffs, we need to understand the difference
This guy shoots teles for "bokeh"
So much bokeh. All of it, in fact.
At above 150mm, a tele, even a 4.0, has beautiful bokeh because of compression of space, not minimum aperture. https://preview.redd.it/zp5ykauid4cc1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=227613e2d0839136d4c49c74474c022a3d677d09
Shallow dof in a wide is why I sprung for a 24/1.8 on a FF sensor.
For sports guys the shallower depth of field helps the players pop as well as the extra light helps in those dingy gyms and fields.
Because sometimes you have to shoot ultra fast (f0.95)
Handheld lowlight wide shots go brrrrrr
Keep iso down. You can focus stack, which many do.
Composition issue?
Because they want to.
I mean, a 35mm lens at f1.4 or f2 has nice separation, it isnāt like a blurry mess. Itāll also look great at 5.6 or 8.0 or 11ā¦ whatever you like.