27th October 2006
Maya lying in the hallway
This entry was posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 20:23 and is filed under Photos.
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October 30th, 2006 at 10:19
Awesome shot! Love the ears, love the dreamlike hallway.
What kind of camera are you using? I am so jealous of the background blur and need to learn if my digital will do it.
October 30th, 2006 at 12:40
Thanks, Jules. I like this picture too.
I have two cameras I use actively right now: a Canon 20D, which is a digital SLR with interchangeable lenses, and a Fuji F30 which is a compact point-and-shoot with tremendous (for compact cameras) high-ISO performance. After realizing that, no matter how noble my intentions, that I would not be able to carry my 20D with me everywhere, I got the F30 for my birthday in October and I am still learning its capabilities and limitations.
I took this picture with my 20D, with a Sigma 20mm lens opened to f/2.2.
Unless you’ve got a camera with a large image sensor (and right now, that is almost exclusively the domain of the digital SLRs) you will won’t be able to get this kind of narrow depth of field for non-macro shots. It just comes down to the rules of optics.
You can simulate the effect if you’ve got Photoshop CS2 using the Lens Blur filter. You need a decent selection, I think, but then it does a very nice job simulating the “bokeh” you see from a real lens.
If you’ve got an older version of Photoshop, or another image editor that supports layers and masking, you can do something like this: duplicate the layer and apply a pretty strong gaussian blur — optimize it for the area that is furthest in the distance. Then apply a mask to that layer and use a gradient to reveal only part of the blurred layer: most at the most-distant part of the scene, the dropping as it gets to the area that should be sharp. It’s not as good as the Lens Blur and it takes more care to use, but it is an option if you only have a small-sensor digital camera.