Depth of Field

So, I can't sleep. Got out of bed and decided to continue on with the book I bought that discusses photography with my particular camera. I am on 'Depth of Field' - which is: "the distance over which objects in a photograph appear sharply focused".

I gotta say right here ... I was pretty happy just pointing my camera and clicking the shutter button ...


so naive ...


so carefree ...


shooting without a thought in my head ...

I mastered ISO settings, shutter speed and apertures (f-stops) yesterday and felt ever so clever. But I am getting bogged down. Now - I need to know 'depth of field' to be a more "Artful" photographer.

Blink.


What?


Blink.





Me and art don't get along.





At all.




I like looking at 'Art' - all kinds, in fact, but as for creating 'Art' - real 'Art'?




Not me. The stuff hanging on my walls that I can call mine? I POINTED MY CAMERA AND FREAKING HIT THE SHUTTER BUTTON!!!





Now ... man - all you photographers out there - I bow down to your skill and knowledge and ability to do this on the fly. That's my trouble here. I don't think my brain is big enough to fit all this information in and to process it for every photo session I encounter.

Alas, gone are the days when I can blissfully just point and shoot! Now I will forever feel guilty that I am not dicking with my aperture to see if my shot can look a wee bit more 'artful' what ever the frick that means ...


OK - bitch session over ... (it is after one in the morning and I am just grumpy because I can't sleep). The concept IS rather cool. I am very excited to play with new things - I am just not very adaptable on the fly ...

So, for two days my office / entry have been in disarray. Every time I get up and grab my keys Charlie goes berserk thinking we are off on an adventure to Sonic (which, for the most part, was true ...) and starts running in circles and jumping.

Little problem ....


See in this photo:




That is a 'sort of' expensive camera (it's all relative, guys) sitting there on that tripod and I am pretty sure if she bumps into it she could knock it over. And I have it adjusted so that I can just click the shutter button and take the same exact photo over and over - changing the settings, but having the photo stay the same, so I have not wanted to move it.

Poor Charlie. She has been yelled at more these past two days than all of last year ...

So - my set up is a rather simplistic, albeit a clever one. I needed a foreground and a background and since my butt is apparently glued to my office chair ... my Indoor Garden #2 (I really don't call it that, guys) is pretty much my only option. So .... I took out 'Drunken Birdhouse' (it tilts a wee bit) and made it the foreground. It was the right height, but I wanted a little more detail to see how sharp my image was - thus the 'Drunken Birdhouse That Looks Like it Has a Hangover With the Excedrin Bottle' was born and the background I am usually focusing on is the sunflowers. All set!

So - Depth of Field. (I SO know you care, but this is really cool!). If the aperture opening is very small - you have a greater depth of field (like when you squint to get stuff farther away in focus). If the aperture is wide open, the depth of field is very small. When your camera is on portrait - the f-stop is small (aperture open large) so that the stuff behind your subject is blurry. If your camera is on landscape your f-stop is large (aperture small) everything you can see is in focus. Very clever, yes?

So I played - just to see for myself. And it was interesting what I had to do.

My first photo I took with an f-stop of 4.5 (aperture opening is the largest it can be on my camera), my ISO (quality of film when you had film - now how sensitive your camera is to the light coming in) I wanted to keep on the best setting - 100 - so something had to give - what's left? Yes - shutter speed - which my camera will help me with on some of the settings and suggest a number so that the photo will come out. It politely said "Why don't you go with 1/4 second?". This is why I am using a tripod. Apparently I am a vampire - only coming out to take photos at night - so my shutter speeds are all too long for me to hold my camera by hand - I would shake the camera and blur the photo at that speed. So - background is blurry - just like he said it would be. Very cool.


NOW, I change the f-stop to the highest setting for my camera f-29 and my camera FREAKS OUT!!! The ISO is still set for 100. My camera starts screaming "I CAN'T DO IT!! I CAN'T DO IT" - very politely by having the Shutter Speed of 30 seconds flash - indicating that it was longer than 30 seconds and my camera won't take a photo for 30 seconds unless I do something fancy and hold down the button for as long as I want the shutter open - but - I would shake the camera, now wouldn't I? Even on the tripod I am using a remote to fire my camera - I don't click the shutter button - that would shake the camera. So - I ratchet down the f-stop until my camera starts breathing normally again - which was f-20 - not too bad. So ISO was 100 and the shutter speed was 30 seconds.

Which I will say right now blows me away. Thirty seconds is a FREAKING LONG time! I went back to reading my book while I waited. It does not seem that dark in here, and sure, the aperture is a very small hole or what ever it actually is, but still - 30 seconds? Also - and this is VERY creepy. Charlie walked in between my camera and the birdhouse TWICE while my camera was 'shooting' and I see no evidence of this in the way of ghosting or what ever it would be called. Like what - my camera went off and did it's nails and came back? Where is my dog in this photo? OK, just her tail, but - where is it?

And also interesting to me - this photo is much sharper than the other. I would think after, oh, 20 seconds things would start to blur ... but that is just me ... rambling ...

So - everything in focus - a large depth of field ... just like the book says ...


So - there is your camera lesson for the day - Depth of Field. Now, when you go out to take a picture of a flower, you don't just have to take the picture of the flower, you have to look at whats surrounding said flower and whether or not you think it would look good in focus in addition to the flower or out of focus. Damn, this is too hard!

OH!!!


You know what? I'll take the freaking photos ANY WAY I FEEL LIKE, then I will PHOTOSHOP them into "Art" ...






... hows that?