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Re: [OM] IMG: Leica Photographers

Subject: Re: [OM] IMG: Leica Photographers
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 13:35:23 -0800
On 11/5/2014 7:02 AM, Tina Manley wrote:
I love shallow depth of field which is one reason I dislike most digital
photos.

http://tinamanley.smugmug.com/Documentary/Black-and-White/

As Phillipe says, DoF is not inherently different for digital. If you refer to the many like me who like lots of DoF, and happen to shoot digital, let me assure you I did the same thing on film, often working the line between overall loss of detail from too small apertures against a desired DoF. One may do either on either medium, as you do with your fast lenses on the FF Leicas.

Of course, I seldom shoot people, and the overlap between our subjects isn't that great. The perfect plane of and depth of focus for a close-up of a giant dandelion head is tricky. When I get it right, I get great pleasure from the image. :-)

My objection to many of your shallow DoF images is different from Chuck's. If it's shallow DoF, the focal plane is in the right place and shallow is right for the subject, I don't generically object to OoF foregrounds.

In my eye's opinions, yours that you choose to post all too often miss the focal plane that would make them. The one posted above is perfect in that respect, as are many of yours.

We've had this discussion before. You vigorously defend the portrait with focal plane on the ear in front, slightly behind the rear eye, and so on. I just don't like those, or those straight on where the nose is grossly OoF, simply finding them unpleasant to look at.

A couple of our differences in this regard are differences of viewpoint. I see photographs as individual, each one standing on its own, both as to subject and technical qualities. When I do a book, and it would be the same for me to do a gallery show, they need to relate to each other - in an artistic way, which I sometimes don't understand in my mind at all, but can 'see'. I do then relax my standards slightly, including images that are technically strong, but whose subjects may not be strong enough to stand on their own. More than one person has suggested that my photo books are meditations, images without words that create a certain mood or even meditative state. That's not your interest.

In one direction, your interests are far more documentary, and stock oriented. In another, they are about people, and you are happy to ignore technical faults like poor focus if the human subject is of interest.

It does interest me that the many, many portraits by photographers more famous than you that I look at almost invariably have the plane of focus either right at the forward eye or between nose and near eye, such that both are in reasonable focus.

In my imagination, Steve McCurry, as a less than perfect example, perhaps, but one I am quite familiar with from a gift book, and one who seems to make a good living at it, has gazillions of outtakes, the majority due to missed plane of focus.

Nothing inherently wrong with yours or mine. We just have different eyes and taste. I like to see both the redwood canopy and the near trunks in focus.

Moose On Focus

--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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