Effect help

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AndyNickson

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Andrew
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It's pretty much what you said - using depth of field to have one plane of the photograph in focus (the blokes face in your example) and the background lights out of focus.

It's easy to do with a SLR camera, either film or digital, by setting a wide (small no. - say 1:1.4) aperture on a long-ish lens (say the 55mm+ end of a typical slr kit lens)

Have a look here and
Shallow_focus
for some more details, then ask a few more questions - it's a standard trick for 'toggers :)

Edit: if we're talking kit lenses the wide end may well be more like 1:3.5 :lol:
 
yes Andy, its just a case of focusing on the subject, so the background is blurry.

You can do this with most cameras, as long as you use a fairly long focal length, and a big aperture.
Some point and shoot cameras dont allow a great ability to do that, but most will.
Also distance from the camera to the subject, and to the background is important. The closer you are to the subject and the greater the distance to the background, the greater the effect.
 
Thanks. Is there anyway to do something similar on a digi cam (as in not SLR)
 
what cam are you using Andy? yes is the answer, but to what extent depends on what your cam is capable of doing.
At its longest zoom length, with the widest aperture it can, you should get a blurry bg if the bg is far enough away, and your quite close to the subject.
 
That's the thing, im still actually looking for a camera but was hoping to get one that could do some something similar simply because I wanted to be able to take similar photo. (I know I won't get the same effect unless it's a SLR). I posted a topic before but didn't get much feedback, here's the link if it can help here: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=203883

Also if anyone could help me with that subject it would be great too :D
 
you dont need an slr to get that effect. its just about using the best settings and your location, and framing right.

there are a million point and shoot/bridge cameras that come in your budget, and i couldn't possibly recommend or decipher which is best for you.
I think your best bet is to pop into your local camera shop and see whats available and try a few.
I know that Nikon have just released the Coolpix L110, which i've read good reviews about, and would achieve what your after to a pretty good extent, and is priced at your £190 budget level. But there are loads more to choose from.
Basically, you are going to want to get one with the best iso/noise abilities as your going to be using it in the dark a lot by the sounds of it, a good zoom length, and the widest aperture, saying that though, is pretty much what we all want.
 
Im going to have a look around some shops on tuesday so I'll probably post a few and see if you guys can help me pic the best one.
 
You won't be able to take shots like the one linked in the OP with a compact digicam. Their sensors are too small and they naturally deliver too much depth of field. In addition they often don't have low f/number lenses.

The pic in your link was probably taken with something like a 70-200mm zoom at f/2.8 on a DSLR, quite possibly a full frame camera which has even shallower depth of field than regular crop format DSLRs. You won't get near the extent of that very shallow depth of field effect with any compact.
 
I guess its down to how you interpret the word 'like' and 'extent'.

If you want a pic the same as the link, then yep, you aint gonna get it for under £200 on a point and shoot.

But with a few p&s cams offerering 500mm at f5 ish, even with the small sensors, you will get the effect to an extent. How close you are to the subject and the distance of the bg is very relevant as well.
 
idigitize said:
I guess its down to how you interpret the word 'like' and 'extent'.

If you want a pic the same as the link, then yep, you aint gonna get it for under £200 on a point and shoot.

But with a few p&s cams offerering 500mm at f5 ish, even with the small sensors, you will get the effect to an extent. How close you are to the subject and the distance of the bg is very relevant as well.
Click to expand...

That's not true. And also a red herring.

There is no compact with a 500mm lens; there are only compacts with the equivalent field of view of a 500mm lens on a full frame camera. Their actual focal length is nearer 100mm.

Secondly, it wouldn't make any difference even if you could fit a 500mm lens on a compact as the image size would still be tiny (and you'd have to shoot from about half a mile away). This is what is creating the shallow depth of field, in conjunction with the f/number.

Very roughly (because it depends on the exact format size) compacts have around a 5x crop factor relative to full frame. If you multiply f/number by the crop factor, you get both the equivalent focal length and depth of field characteristics.

So, if you take 100mm f/5 as an example on a compact, in optical terms that will form an image equivalent to 500mm f/25 on full frame, and quite a lot of depth of field at the distance you'd have to shoot from.

Put it another way, if we assume that the pic on the OP's link was taken on a full frame DSLR, with a 200mm lens at f/2.8 (which is probably a fair guess, though it's impossible to be accurate without knowing more about the background and how far away it is) then to get the equivalent image on a compact you would need a 40mm lens at f/1.0. Impossible.

You can do the calcs here www.dofmaster.com
 
I don't want to sound stupid or ungrateful but I am a bit of a noob when it comes to this so all the talk of f/1.0's and 100mm and stuff it kinda goes straight over my head :lol:
I could spend over £200 but probably not over £250. I've got some money to spend but as im newish I just thought 'I don't want to spend like £600 on a good DSLR and find im not that good or something' so just thought if I can get a good camera for around £150-£200 then that would be good but if the £250 price can get me a better camera than I can spend up to that.

OK, so if gathered that if I want to get anything similar to the effects used in the links then I would need:
•a fairly long focal length
•a big aperture
•one with the best iso/noise abilities

....but I don't really know what any of that means. Like can you do that on a lot of point and shoot cams?
 
i just meant that the longer focal length would help. But yep distance is key.

I recently bought my dad a Nikon p90, effectively a point and shoot with a 24x zoom.
I cant find any of his pics, but if Im allowed to link to a flickr pic, here's a shot taken with it.
LINK
I know its not the same distances as the OP pic, but the effect is pretty similar, which is what i was trying to point out. :)
 
AndyNickson said:
I don't want to sound stupid or ungrateful but I am a bit of a noob when it comes to this so all the talk of f/1.0's and 100mm and stuff it kinda goes straight over my head :lol:
I could spend over £200 but probably not over £250. I've got some money to spend but as im newish I just thought 'I don't want to spend like £600 on a good DSLR and find im not that good or something' so just thought if I can get a good camera for around £150-£200 then that would be good but if the £250 price can get me a better camera than I can spend up to that.

OK, so if gathered that if I want to get anything similar to the effects used in the links then I would need:
•a fairly long focal length
•a big aperture
•one with the best iso/noise abilities

....but I don't really know what any of that means. Like can you do that on a lot of point and shoot cams?
Click to expand...

No, you can't do that with a compact, for the reasons I explained above.

Unfortunately, low f/number lenses are expensive, but you could get pretty close to what you want with a nifty-fifty - that's 50mm f/1.8 lens for about £80 (most brands do one) and is well suited to shallow depth of field portraits. You don't particularly need a long lens, just move closer with a shorter lens and you'll get a mostly similar effect.

You could fit that to a used DSLR, just like the nearly new Canon 350D I sold on here last week for £175. Keep an eye on the For Sale forum.

Here are some examples taken with that lens. Thousands more on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/trancedjmix/2495021974/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elondotcom/3290666735/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebeccataborarmstrong/4184559935/

idigitize said:
i just meant that the longer focal length would help. But yep distance is key.

I recently bought my dad a Nikon p90, effectively a point and shoot with a 24x zoom.
I cant find any of his pics, but if Im allowed to link to a flickr pic, here's a shot taken with it.
LINK
I know its not the same distances as the OP pic, but the effect is pretty similar, which is what i was trying to point out. :)
Click to expand...

The pic in your link is not representative, as it's an extreme close up. When you're very close, depth of field reduces dramatically.

Yes, you could move close with a compact and get a portrait with a similar DoF effect to that, but it would be a picture just of the person's eye. When you move back (or zoom back) to include the whole head and shoulders, the shallow DoF effect is lost.
 
AndyNickson said:
What about the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H20: http://www.which.co.uk/reviews/digi...7,502375/low-/high-/appliedglobal-false-false
or the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5: http://www.which.co.uk/reviews/digi...w/high-9999900-MjUw/appliedglobal-false-false

Would these be any good for a bokeh like effect and macro photos?

Edit:Just realised the DSC-HX5 doesn't come out until March.
Click to expand...

They are both compacts, with very small sensors, so they will only give a shallow DoF effect at very close distance - like a few inches. So like the macro shot, yes.

For the kind of effect in the original pic you posted, a portrait taken at normal distance, no. You need a larger sensor.
 
OK, does anyone know what the predecessor to the DSC-HX5 is? Like I saw a video about the panaramic stitch together feature and some other features but is there a predecessor to it with some of the same features?
 
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