What's going on in this photo?

skysh4rk

skysh4rk

Suspended / Banned
Messages
3,134
Name
RJ
Edit My Images
No
Righto, I'm trying to diagnose a problem that has popped up in a recent photograph. In the photo below, you can see that most of the background is out of focus, except for the very top of the building, that is, which is quite sharp.

I have a few theories, but none seems to pop out to me as the correct explanation. These include:

  1. I had recently banged the lens, so something is out of alignment. (Other photos from the same lens haven't shown any problems that I'm aware of though).
  2. Film flatness (I think it's too big a difference in sharpness between the areas in question to be a flatness issue, however)
  3. I was shooting through a chain-link fence (Probably most likely, but I was shooting at f/2.8, so I would actually expect most of the background behind the men to be blurred at least a bit and the top looks sharper than I'd expect)
So, any thoughts on the matter? Anyone have any ideas? Photograph was taken with my Bronica SQ-B and 80mm f/2.8 lens.


Original Photo

View attachment 11800




Cropped Image

View attachment 11802
 
not realy seeing to much budd, i think its a narrow DOF thats hust a bit queer
 
Defo queer......I've had film flatness issues before particularly on old folders & box cameras which has been no real surprise but from a bronny ...mmm i doubt it.

Tbh RJ, I'd be tempted to do a specific test roll with that particular lens.... like yourself, i dont know where the problem lies but i'd want to rule out the lens being the culprit.
 
It's not a shallow DoF effect, the foreground is in focus and whatever's further back than that blurry wall/sign is also in focus so that's ruled out. If it were a lens problem I'd expect it to show on all frames, or at least more than one.

I reckon the chain link fence theory is the most likely one!
 
Optical illusion, I think. You'd expect the background to be OOF, and it is, but it's just much more noticeable when it's a big painting and a bunch of bricks, than it is when it's planks.
 
Asha said:
Defo queer......I've had film flatness issues before particularly on old folders & box cameras which has been no real surprise but from a bronny ...mmm i doubt it.

Tbh RJ, I'd be tempted to do a specific test roll with that particular lens.... like yourself, i dont know where the problem lies but i'd want to rule out the lens being the culprit.
Click to expand...

I've had film flatness affect an image with my Bronica one time, but this is a known issue with all medium format cameras that turn the film 90 degrees through rollers (e.g., Hasselblad backs, Rolleiflexes, etc.) and you have to get pretty unlucky when it does happen. This issue only occurs on the second exposure after a film has been sitting in the camera for a while, however, and this photograph was the third exposure, so I'm pretty certain I can rule this out.

I've just shot and developed a test roll, so I'll know more about the lens when I scan the film tomorrow morning.

PMN said:
It's not a shallow DoF effect, the foreground is in focus and whatever's further back than that blurry wall/sign is also in focus so that's ruled out. If it were a lens problem I'd expect it to show on all frames, or at least more than one.

I reckon the chain link fence theory is the most likely one!
Click to expand...

Hmmm... I didn't think that the building and other objects behind the wall looked in focus, which is what initially caused my concern, especially as I was shooting at f/2.8. Unfortunately, I don't know the distance I was focused at to determine what my depth of field would have been for this photograph. I've attached a crop of the buildings beyond the wall for consideration.

I agree that the fence is the most likely explanation; I must have been focused far enough away that even objects out to infinity were meant to be in focus, but the fence smeared the detail from some of these areas to make them appear as if they were out-of-focus.



View attachment 11810
 
skysh4rk said:
Hmmm... I didn't think that the building and other objects behind the wall looked in focus, which is what initially caused my concern, especially as I was shooting at f/2.8. Unfortunately, I don't know the distance I was focused at to determine what my depth of field would have been for this photograph. I've attached a crop of the buildings beyond the wall for consideration.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean the buildings behind, I meant the wall above that poster thing which is sharp. It's further away from the camera than the blurry bit because you're looking up to it, meaning the blurry bit is in between two parts that are in focus and sharp. It would take a very odd lens anomaly to make that possible!
 
A guess:- film bowed in the scanner ?
 
PMN said:
I didn't mean the buildings behind, I meant the wall above that poster thing which is sharp. It's further away from the camera than the blurry bit because you're looking up to it, meaning the blurry bit is in between two parts that are in focus and sharp. It would take a very odd lens anomaly to make that possible!
Click to expand...

Oh right, I definitely misread your original post.

Yes, this was exactly why I had initially thought something was wrong with the lens, although I've never seen or heard of any similar lens problem before and it doesn't seem to appear in any other images or on the focusing screen when using the camera.

I do think it's the fence, but I have a roll drying in the bathroom right now that I'll scan tomorrow to confirm.

excalibur2 said:
A guess:- film bowed in the scanner ?
Click to expand...

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that as one of the possible explanations; that was one of the first things that popped into my mind. I immediately rescanned the image once I noticed this, making sure the film was nice and flat, and it looked exactly the same. I then inspected the negative under a loupe and confirmed that it was definitely not a scanner problem.
 
PMN said:
To be fair it was probably me wording it clumsily in the first place. Hope the next roll turns out well, let us know how it goes! :)
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll update the thread tomorrow after I've scanned the negatives. Hopefully it'll be good news!
 
abdoujaparov said:
Optical illusion, I think. You'd expect the background to be OOF, and it is, but it's just much more noticeable when it's a big painting and a bunch of bricks, than it is when it's planks.
Click to expand...

Oops, I missed your post the first time around. I think it's an interesting point regarding the planks versus the bricks, but you can still see the difference in sharpness comparing bricks at the bottom of the cropped image to bricks that are toward the top nearer the planks, so I don't think it's an optical illusion.
 
What is this shot on? This can happen with 5x4 cameras when you adjust the bellows so the dof is at an angle and not flat (if that makes sense) kind of like a tilt shift, but I suppose if something like that has happened the parallax would be a bit off... Interesting.
 
Deedleberry said:
What is this shot on? This can happen with 5x4 cameras when you adjust the bellows so the dof is at an angle and not flat (if that makes sense) kind of like a tilt shift, but I suppose if something like that has happened the parallax would be a bit off... Interesting.
Click to expand...

This was a medium format camera that isn't capable of movements and doesn't have bellows focusing, so I'm hoping that the plane of focus isn't angled like that, otherwise I'd be needing to send the lens in for repair.

I would guess that a shift of the plane of focus that extreme would show up in the viewfinder though and I'm just not seeing any evidence of that at the moment, so I don't think this is what's going on.
 
Last edited:
In which case I'm stumped. I think I will agree with Rob above, in the fact that you broke physics.
 
Could be a problem with the lens, like an element that has shifted position or a localised patch of fungus?
 
retrogamer1990 said:
Could be a problem with the lens, like an element that has shifted position or a localised patch of fungus?
Click to expand...

The only problem with fungus is if you get a large amount on the back lens i.e. one nearest to the camera body......there is a video showing a front lens being increasingly abused and eventually smashed, and even with the front lens cracked (X shape) it still managed a "lomo" picture. :eek: :cool:
 
retrogamer1990 said:
Could be a problem with the lens, like an element that has shifted position or a localised patch of fungus?
Click to expand...

Well, I don't think it's fungus, as I don't see anything in the lens, I store it well, and it was recently serviced by Miles Whitehead about 3-4 months ago.

As for an element shifting, that was a worry of mine, as I'd recently banged the lens, but I would think that such a problem would show up again in the viewfinder and in the images from the lens. I'll be posting a few more photos from the lens in just a moment, so we can have a closer look to see if anything's going on.
 
Okay, I have a number of photos from the 80mm lens in question taken at various apertures, shutter speeds, and distances. Here are a few from the test roll that I took yesterday evening:




View attachment 11870



And then here are a few real world examples that were taken just before and after the photo in question:







Nothing really pops out at me as out of the ordinary, so I'm still thinking the fence explanation the most likely, but maybe someone else can spot something that I haven't, as I'm not much of a pixel peeper. For a moment, I thought that some of the branches in the tree photo looked fuzzier than I would have expected, but I'm not so certain of that anymore.
 
Last edited:
Well I can't see anything adrift in them shots RJ......at least that appears good news re the lens.

Other than holding the fence responsible in some way for the obscure result, I reckon we can only put it down to one of lifes mysteries.

Perhaps one day someone else somewhere will come up with a similar issue and know exactly the cause.
 
Asha said:
Well I can't see anything adrift in them shots RJ......at least that appears good news re the lens.

Other than holding the fence responsible in some way for the obscure result, I reckon we can only put it down to one of lifes mysteries.

Perhaps one day someone else somewhere will come up with a similar issue and know exactly the cause.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think everything's fine. If the problem were the lens, I imagine that we would have seen something quite obvious in these photos.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top