Originally Posted by Rocco
Frankly, it's a tough lens to shoot wide open, because the DoF is so thin - as a result, you don't see too many pros shooting with the 85L wide open. Stopping down a little increases DoF, but it only increases the sharpness a little - so at f/1.8 it's almost as soft as it is wide open. You can see that soft look in the 100% crop on the right: [:P]
[img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Components-UserFiles/00-00-00-35-15/AnotherEyeCrop.jpg[/img]
It depends what you mean by 'soft' and what kind of photo.
For
portraits, Soft Focus is a defined style, always been popular. Canon
even make a dedicated
Soft
Focus portrait lens. So do Mamiya for their 645 and nikon too
iirc.
.
If you mean the 'low contrast' and/or 'washed out'
look, that's a bit different. There's certainly a trend for 'old-style'
looking photos these days. almost every P&S and the entry-level
dslrs offer different 'creative' shot modes, most of which reduce
contrast, maybe sepia-wash it, add a lot of vignetting, soft-focus
(gaussian blur), add 'high ISO film-look' grain, or all of the above. Or
you can do the same thing in photoshop.
Or you can do it
properly, and buy a Lensbaby or Pinhole if you don't have or don't want
to use photoshop (like me). Or just go buy a 1950s Box Brownie and get
the real thing.
Some people like it, some don't. It's certainly got the elements of 'fad' written on it sometimes.
Sometimes it works well, one of my favourite bands, Angus & Julia Stone do it for a lot of their tour photos. It certainly complements their musical style.
.
The
other option is possible, but i don't think so, that pros are
deliberately 'downgrading' quality so noone steals their work. Would you
buy a new car if you were only allowed to test-drive a go-cart? Or buy a
new LCD TV if you can only watch a CRT in-store? down-res, sure.
digital watermarking is very good these days too.
.
Another
option is that people with no artistic talent and crappy kit lenses are
passing themselves off as 'pros' because they have a good-looking
website.
This
site is great, as long as you take it with a grain of salt and don't
get offended easily (my missus called it 'classist').
.
@OP: Got any examples of the types of photos you're talking about you can link to?
An awful lot of electrons were terribly inconvenienced in the making of this post.
Gear Photos
Dr-Croubie you raise an interesting point. What would the life expectancy a Photographer be if he shot a women in sharp focus
Canon EOS 7D, EF-S 10-22, EF 24-105L, EF 50 f1.2L, EF 70-300L, 430EX.
"Criticism is something you can easily avoid, by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing." - Tara Moss
LOL, I would fear the worst for him!
Cheers,
John.
Here's an example from the great Joe Mcnally..
[View:http://i53.tinypic.com/15zow9c.png]
Soft, out of focus, blurry in spots. I notice this technique used by a lot of Nikon shooters to be exact while Canon shooters photos are usually more sharper and in focus. Or maybe I'm just crazy.
That is a well executed shot, in my opinion. Joe chose a shutter speed that was slow enough to capture the movement of the subject's hair in the wind. He also used a flash camera right which exposed the subjects face so that (for the most part) it looks quite sharp (even though there is some ghosting on his right side.
I used a similar technique about a month and a half ago when shooting this shot:
While the movement isn't caused by the wind, but rather by me zooming during the relatively long shutter speed (1/25 sec). I also used a flash camera right, as well as centering his face in the frame in order to maintain sharpness on his face. This was the first time I had tried something like this--and it's not something I will do often, but it was a fun experiment and I like the shot that came out of it.
Yeah I agree it
Hm, I don't see it the same way. To me, the image is too *sharp*. Look at how many of the individual hairs follow a jagged, pixelated course. Hair doesn't do that in real life, and neither did film, so it gives the photo an ugly "digital" look. I bet it looks more natural in print. Of course, most web images look like that, so a lot of people may not even notice.This is usually a sign of either a junky, low-quality downsampling filter (such as Photoshop's) introducing aliasing artifacts, JPEG artifacts, or too much sharpening after resizing.
I don't see anything out of focus that shouldn't be, and all the soft/blurry spots appear to be intentional.
What would you suggest as the correct way to down-sample?
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote