• Please use real names.

    Greetings to all who have registered to OPF and those guests taking a look around. Please use real names. Registrations with fictitious names will not be processed. REAL NAMES ONLY will be processed

    Firstname Lastname

    Register

    We are a courteous and supportive community. No need to hide behind an alia. If you have a genuine need for privacy/secrecy then let me know!
  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Well, that allover-sharpness

M

Michael Fontana

pro member
Brave new world, with that allover-sharpness!

Since digital, we often face that overall-sharpness; I'm getting thick of it, it often lacks photo but reminds me rather generics renderings.
Is that only a reflex from good old analog time, only?

A lensbaby isn't a solution - so what should be done?

I went the other day for a Zeiss 85 mm, and yes it has that zeissy pop (microcontrast).
(Sidenote: beeing on par/better than the higlyl regarded Canon-macro 100.)

OT_MS_stitch.jpg


That's a stitch of 5 x 2 frames with the 85 mm; as it's taken close, DOF isn't that much, but there's plenty, or rather tons of detail. The FOV is compatable to a 35 mm-lens/FF, but then, off course it's different:
I had to downsample the 135 cm/300 dpi-image a lot to make it viewable on screen.


MS_detail1.jpg



DOF is so shallow, that even the sculpture is out of its range:


MS-detail2.jpg


Obviously, I will not abuse this - it won't work in every situation - but the combination of out of DOF and extreme details gave me a °feel of photography° that I didn't have for a good while.

The FOV is compatable to a 35 mm-lens/FF, but then, off course it's different.
 
M

Michael Fontana

pro member
Hi Asher

It's still the 1 Ds-2, why that question?

I rather intended to discuss OOF vs allover-sharpness. A controlled, narrow DOF can be used to guide the viewer's eye in the image. It's parth of the creation.

When stitching (rotating the lens/panohead), DOF rotates as well; in the sculpture example, it seems that this fact made a different aerea sharp than when using a 35 mm in a single shot.

Maybe this creates this special °thing°, when looking at the image, but I doubt that you will see it in the shown pictures. Web is so silly for that....

Bart or Doug might tell more about that; I just noticed it in the image, and drew it on paper.
It's been 5 klicks with 5 steps of 10 degs horizontally, plus a 2nd row with + 15 degs vertically.

Asher, before you ask: the lens is the Sonnar 2.8/85, from YCZ, has besides its sharpness a nice bokeh (as all Sonnar have, therefore this lens is ideal for OOF) and small; half of the weight of the Canon 100 macro, only, to carry with...
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
MS-detail2.jpg


This Michael, is Nirvana of presentation. It's sensuous, provocative, ready to interact with our entire library of ideas and it will be so tomorrow and in 100 years. I could add some questions of your choices, where the blur might be, the extent of the stone shown, for example, but you have already arrived and it's done, delivered. Now, I like it as is!

I have written many times how much I think it adds to an image to rank the physicality of each part of the picture, as they eye does. Aesthetics demands that we value certain "things" and therefore other instants of "things" need to have less worth or our chosen motif is not easily perceived. A composition creates an interplay of forces of different substance which helps us build the experience we recognize in the art.

This, for our purposes, just here, excludes "art of the empty, black and blurred canvas", and that's an entirely different experience. Here you are projecting to us a micro-world of your select vision, feelings and ideas you want us to enter with you, bringing our own ideas as nuance, vibration and flavor.

This is also the reason why Jim Galli and others spend such a lot of effort on old lenses designed (or by happenstance) with soft b.g. blur or "bokeh", each characteristic of that lens.

We are plagued by an obsession with perfection. Thanks for this work.

Asher
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Where one can use the Zeiss lenses: 5D or 5DII?

Michael Fontana said:
Hi Asher

It's still the 1 Ds-2, why that question?
Click to expand...

This is because I have an issue with the mirror of the 5D not clearing my valuable Zeiss lenses. I was hoping you might be using the 5DII and could then reassure me that it can be used!

Certainly, this is a good reason for not selling my 1D Mark II which takes these lenses with no problems at all.

Asher
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Mapping out an OOF strategy for a composition.

Michael Fontana said:
Bart or Doug might tell more about that; I just noticed it in the image, and drew it on paper.
It's been 5 klicks with 5 steps of 10 degs horizontally, plus a 2nd row with + 15 degs vertically.
Click to expand...

I think one might proceed by sketching it out so that one picture, anywhere you choose, is not angled and the shifted shots around it are tilted or swung away from that initial frame.

I'd love to see a snap of your sketch of the composition and lens movements. Where do the clicks come from? It sound like you are using some special mount to move the lens?

Asher
 
M

Michael Fontana

pro member
Zeiss/Oly -> 5D Compatibility List

Hi Asher

the 85 Sonnar should be ok, look at fredmiranda. The 5D-II looks to have the same mirrorbox as the 5D, but prior to crunch the mirror, asking it in that forum might be a good idea.....
 
M

Michael Fontana

pro member
Asher Kelman said:
I think one might proceed by sketching it out so that one picture, anywhere you choose, is not angled and the shifted shots around it are tilted or swung away from that initial frame.

I'd love to see a snap of your sketch of the composition and lens movements. Where do the clicks come from? It sound like you are using some special mount to move the lens?

Asher
Click to expand...

For the klickstop, look here

It allows to set 10 different angles of rotation; 5,10, 15, 20, 24, 30, 36, 45, 60 & 90° for the entire 360 deg-range. It's pretty solid, as it kept the panohead with cam - 1 Ds-2 - and lens in a nearly a horizontal position.

Well, the image Nr 3 is in the center, and image 1, 2 and 4 & 5 swing around it. So yes, the focus was done in image 3.

But then what happens to the different DOF-aereas, when they' re stitched in the app?

As the lens rotates arround the NNP, so does the FOV, so it must produce a sphere of DOF, with center at the NNP.

I went back, had a look at the big stitch; and drawed the OOF and DOF-aereas.
Just by doing that, I realized, that there was a sphere-DOF, and together with the round shape of the sculpture, it made that special °thing°:

DOF-OOF.jpg
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Michael Fontana said:
For the klickstop, look here
Wonderful! now I have to study it!
is in the center, and image 1, 2 and 4 & 5 swing around it. So yes, the focus was done in image 3.

Michael Fontana said:
But then what happens to the different DOF-aereas, when they' re stitched in the app?

As the lens rotates arround the NNP, so does the FOV, so it must produce a sphere of DOF, with center at the NNP.

I went back, had a look at the big stitch; and drawed the OOF and DOF-aereas.
Just by doing that, I realized, that there was a sphere-DOF, and together with the round shape of the sculpture, it made that special °thing°:

DOF-OOF.jpg
Click to expand...

Michael,

This is a whole new tool. I have to devote some time to it tonight! Your diagram is very helpful. Thanks for the effort in making this available.

Asher
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
M

Michael Fontana

pro member
Yep Asher

that Monfrotto klickstopp is really a good thing, especially, when a fast serie of shots is required, due to moving things like clouds, etc...

another help: this is a 100%-crop from the background of the stitch....
- I like that damn little Sonnar ;-)


background.jpg
 
B

Bart_van_der_Wolf

pro member
Michael Fontana said:
Bart or Doug might tell more about that; I just noticed it in the image, and drew it on paper.
It's been 5 klicks with 5 steps of 10 degs horizontally, plus a 2nd row with + 15 degs vertically.
Click to expand...

Hi Michael,

The DOF of a stitched image follows an unfamiliar pattern (unless one uses a T/S lens, where things can get even more unfamiliar, yet at the full control of the photographer). With a regular (un-tilted) pano/stitching setup (adjusted for, and rotating around, the entrance pupil) you get a kind of sphere of DOF around the focus distance. In this particular case it intersects with the opposite sphere of the rock. It is similar to, but different from, the effect of a large format view camera (relatively shallow DOF due to the angle of the imaging cone of light).

A longer focal length for stitched images offers/allows such a shallow DOF, even for modest fields of view.

Bart
 
M

Michael Fontana

pro member
Yep Mike

a astonishing amount of quality on different levels, even the construction is 30 years old!
The Sonnar has a nice bokeh, nicer than the Planar, they all say, therefore the Sonnar fits better in that OOF-scenario, but I haven't compared them.


Thanks Bart for confirming the sphere of DOF; that helps a lot to understand better how to go on.

I did a simple - 3 image one row - stitch for comparison of the same subject, taken at double distance than the first example:

it looks boring, or more conventional, lacks that special expression - that wow in terms of °visual pop° (not technically)

The difference between DOF-area and OOF-area is not so pronounced, as DOF is bigger, and OOF isn't that much blured, while there's the impression of less resolution in the DOF area.

There must be a certain amount of blur versa a certain amount of high definition, to get that expression. I didn't found a rule yet, but I try to figure out:

is it the doubled size of the object beeing the distance from lens from the object - with that 85 mm-lens?
Or is there another relationship between object size, focal lenghts, distance and enhanced DOF/OOF-ratio?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top