I hope you won’t laugh at me but I’d rather ask anyway.
Normally I am shooting either landscapes (focus on the distant subject) or people (focus on the person). Since I switched to a FF camera I realized that the focusing behaves quite different from the previous crop sensor (much shallower).
My family is less than trilled with the pictures. Reason being - I am drawn to the person (naturally) and especially the eye. At the same time - I have to keep the scenery (the mountain in the case or the city) in a good focus.
I tend to keep the aperture (most of the time at 5.6 to 8) and the focus is on the eye. However - the distance is about 1 m. to the person(s) and anywhere from 200 m to infinity for the background.
Can you please share an advice how to manage best under the circumstance? I was recently comparing 2 pictures (just the mountains - without people) and I can see a lot of focus lost when moving from F5.6 to F16 (focus is infinity). But if I am to introduce the person (and focus at the eye of the person) the chance of introducing blur in the background increases significantly.
I guess what I am looking for is something like
Safe aperture (before being too much affected by the blurring of the lens on higher F stops)
General positioning of the person in the scene in terms of distance so the person is still very well visible and on focus yet not becoming too small in perspective of the mountain behind, nor too close so the camera won’t be able to keep both in reasonable focus
Perhaps intentionally changing the focus at a distance (hyper focus)? I haven’t had much success with it.
You didn’t mention focal length, but shooting with a wider lens might help. This is effectively what you were doing with a crop-sensor camera: for the same fill you would choose a wider (shorter fl) lens.
People often use FF because they want a soft (= blurred) background. So, if you prefer the opposite you can just increase the distance to the subject and close the aperture.
Yes - it is helpful indeed. For some reason I was trying to merge the 2 diagrams DoF and hyperbolic distance in one but they are 2 separate things that are being calculated.
I tend to shoot 28-50 (usually). If I am to shoot wider - I have to change the lens. The Tamron’s bracket on the lenses that I have is 17-28 and 28-75. IMO this breaking point at 28 is okay but not the best (this is in case one tries to constantly switch lenses)
I like blurred background (when shooting people only). My family however - wants everything in focus. Especially the landscape behind.
Based on the site that @Doug-Phoenix pointed - looks like
28mm focal length
Distance ~2 m
F6.7 to F8 (I am concerned if I close the aperture further I may start seeing the effect diffraction - although - I don’t know when they are going to be bothering)
should give me what I am looking for.
It is a good starting point and I can continue experimenting further.
Thank you, I am on Sony a7c m II. Recently processed same image shot twice - at F5.6 and F16. There was a noticeable difference. I should admit however that my comparison was on screen - 100% or more - not sure how would a print do if ever.
I think you will be fine at f/11. It’s just a theoretical transition point. But in practical terms, I doubt you would notice diffraction. Especially with Mica’s confirmation above.
I’m happy to shoot at f/16 or f/22 as the case may be. You can also use heavy sharpening on diffraction-softened images without risking overshoot/ringing artifacts.
Wrapping your head around the hyperfocal distance for a particular focal length and aperture combination is the fundamental skill you need to learn.
I personally haven’t gone down the FF route because I like the extra DoF I get from a crop sensor. However, I upgraded to a Canon R7 mirrorless and have rediscovered manual focus and focus peaking to visualize what is and isn’t in focus. If your FF is mirrorless and offers focus peaking I would encourage you to experiment with it in manual focus mode.
For landscape photography I teach my students that if using a 18mm lens at F8 and focusing on a point 2.5 meters away from the camera all the mountains in the distance are in focus and half way back to the camera from their point of focus.
That is fine for a crop sensor. But with a full frame you use longer focal length lens to get the same angle of view and that means less DoF. Closing the aperture down to F16 maybe necessary and changing the focus point to 3 meters may also be necessary. But a decent DoF guide will help you determine what works well for you if you need to maximize DoF.
I was banging my head against the wall quite a bit before the light started shining (little by little)
Sony a7 cm II does have focus peaking. The practical challenge for me is my family usually wants a picture “now” that “does not take too long” and has “everything in focus”. I on the other hand am quite irritated if the eye(s) is not on focus. For this reason - I tend to set it and forget it (especially for the family photos)
It seems to be a good approach - I started on Canon 70D (this is when I found Darktable). It is crop 1.6 so 18 mm on a kit lens comes to 28 on FF. So the same rule applies. If I need to - I can close a bit more - this can give me a bit of extra space.
I think this is the key. I never purchased photopills but was using a freebie on the phone. It maybe not the app itself - just my brain had a challenge processing it. And it is good that there is a web site that one can use on a computer. Well - I messed up some pictures (on a vacation - my wife was not happy) so - have to live with it. Will try to do better next time.
I would not feel the need to buy a DoF program as there are so many free ones out there.
When shooting wide angle I recommend these settings for my students to ensure foreground and background are focused.
Focus @ 1.5 metres (F8 with 15mm lens)
Focus @ 2.5 metres (F8 with 18mm lens)
Focus @ 2.5 metres (F16 with 24mm lens)
Focus @ 3 metres (F16 with 28mm lens)
Longer focal lengths will almost certainly not have enough DoF for subject close to camera and distant background razor sharp. Closing aperture down will help but focusing on person becomes the priority. When I was trained as a wedding photographer in the late 70’s I was taught to shoot f8 to ensure people were in focus. Bokeh effect was less important in the 70’s compared to now so this worked well.
This impressive - it was all film, all manual. My first bitter/sweet experience (on the SLR arena) was a Zenit. When it worked - it was good. Too bad that the light meter was not working well (50% of the time). I got burned and had to wait about 15 years before I got a Canon SLR film (this one worked well). The others were point and shoot (cheep fixed lenses but I’d still want to scan the negatives). And of course - who can forget the Smena - it was all that kids can afford (or hope to get a present really).
What was the focal length you shoot with? I assume you were using 35mm film?.
I shoot a 28mm lens of a full frame. In my experience with that camera, if I have a single (environmental) portrait then F8 is indeed fine. But when a group photo… well F8 is not enough…
Depending on the resolution, f/11 is the point where diffraction only starts creeping in (I think that’s for 24 MP full-frame), you won’t notice much until at least 16, and even then capture sharpening in Darktable should be able to mitigate that.
I used to shoot f/16 on APS-C and that’s the more sensitive system, but it was still fine
Your family members want everything in focus, but I suspect they are unlikely to pixel-peep to check whether the sharpness is hindered by diffraction ;-).
At that time most wedding photographers shot a 50mm prime lens. F8 worked fine. I was an early adopter of zoom lenses for wedding work as well. If I was worried about DoF I might close down the lens more for large groups.
BTW, I use a Sigma 16-300mm zoom on my Canon R7 now. I prefer to use F11 because the resolution is around the best at this aperture. That is across the board for most focal lengths. However, I have noted that f5-f11 is best range for 16mm and to avoid f16 due to diffraction. at 100-300mm f11 to f22 is best range with f16 maybe the best. I did some testing to determine this.
