Depth of field techniques can create some
magical effects, from making soft, pleasing backgrounds in portraits to having
everything from a foot to infinity appear sharp throughout the frame in landscape work. One of
the tricks that can be played with aperture settings is to eliminate
distracting foreground elements by focusing “through” them while using a wide open aperture setting to create a shallow depth
of field. This can be used to “eliminate” bars at a zoo, a chain link fence at
a baseball game or, in this illustration, a rope that surrounded a
merry-go-round in Madrid, Spain.
The ride was closed for the winter, and the
owners had surrounded it with a rope fence to keep kids from hopping on and
playing inside (though knowing kids you can be sure they found a way through!) To
illustrate this technique, two equivalent exposures were made with the same
lens from the same point of view. The lens is set on manual focus and focused
on the closest horse. (Autofocus might have “snagged” on the rope.) A fast lens
with a maximum aperture of f/1.4 was used. The first exposure was f/11 at 1/60 second (above) An equivalent exposure was made at f/1.4 at
1/4000 second (below). Note the very soft background. In essence,
the very wide aperture setting put the rope so out of focus that it
“disappeared.”
Settings: 50mm f/1.4 lens. Both images focused
on the foreground horse. Right: f/1.4 at
1/4000 second. Above: f/11 at 1/60 second.
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