What are your thoughts about using limited DoF as a compositional device?
Four in B&W…
28-200 zoom f/3.5-5.6 @ 86mm f/5.6
28-200 zoom f/3.5-5.6 @ 200mm f/8
28-200 zoom f/3.5-5.6 @ 125mm f/8
28-200 zoom f/3.5-5.6 @ 200mm f/5.6
… and finally a colour shot
28-200 zoom f/3.5-5.6 @ 86mm f/5
Your comments welcome
EXIFs added
Its one tool in the box, and its subject dependent IMV
Using DoF is part of the photographers (hopefully smart) decision
The intention may be to show/explain the circumstances, tell a story, etc. or to reduce it to a certain level and emphasize/articulate the issue. For the latter, it should be (enough) interesting if it’s not just about showing the details.
It’s only a pity you didn’t pay enough attention to the background. That pillar or whatever it is behind the lamp is distracting.
George
There’s no exif in both yours and Joanna’s.
George
That would be a pity. Now several important facts are unknown, not only the f-nr but also the focal length. And distance but that is, when it’s written, unreliable.
George
Yes, written under it.
A few years ago I wrote a program that shows the development of the coc relative to the used aperture, focal length and distance. All dof calculators show the boarders under the max coc, I was interested in the coc development in total.
The black lines are for a FF camera, the green for a APS-C camera with a crop factor of 1.52.
The horizontal lines are the max accepted coc values, 0.03 and 0.0197.
Vertical the coc values and horizontal the shooting distance.
The bended lines are the calculated coc for the camera settings.
In this example you see the focusing distance at 8meter, focal length 15mm and the used diafragma 1. As long the bended line is under its max coc line the image is sharp. But important to me anyway was also how far is the bended line away from the max coc line.
This is when a focal length of 105mm is used. Unfortunately the vertical line changes. But you see the bended line is above the horizontal max coco line.
George
I’m afraid you didn’t understand what I show. The here used isolation is done as 2 parts in the image: sharp and unsharp. Sharp is that what’s under the max coc, unsharp is what’s above the max coc. But there’s also a question of how much above the max coc. Let’s say the difference between your first two images.
I expanded the program with a second camera. So you can see how things will work when using another sensor size. What you wanted to archive with isolation will be different then.
George
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Go ahead and show us some examples where you used your fancy table in the field to calculate precisely the emotional impact…
don’t be shy…
Well, you showed with your first 2 images. A complete different unsharp area. But how to explain that? I just did.
Bad day??
CoC is a common used quantity in photography. Take a cup of coffee first.
George
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Are you asking for thoughts on these photos specifically or opening a general discussion?
Thoughts… Yes, using DoF is an essential aspect of a good photo, but must match the viewing perspective (near/far) to seem credible (unless that dissonance is part of the story).
For the images…
I think depth of field is another way to compose a shot, that is to say help draw attention to something and away from something else, similar to how one would use color, light or shapes in composition. But like any tool it can be overused as some people only buy fast lenses and shoot wide open all the time even when there are better ways to compose a particular shot. However, used tastefully, a beautifully rendered bokeh can be very appealing. Especially if one has a busy background that you don’t want to draw attention to and you only want to isolate the subject.
I don’t have many to share that are done with DXO since I often ad DOF in post actually, but here is one shot of domesticated spider cleaning the house from unwanted bugs.
Black and white help to simplify the composition, and little bit of bokeh help this further, so its a nice addition to other methods of composition I think. Generally speaking. It can be a nice addition to have little bit of shallow depth of field for some shots like this. But if the background was very busy, even super shallow depth of field would not help it that much.
Four of the initial images I find boring, wondering why you took them, but this one I love. Everything about it is perfect, the shading, the composition, the detail, and the way the entire images send us right to the propeller - but even the details are lovely. I think showing it in B&W is better than had you used color.
Well, your selected depth of field made the entire propeller sharp, but the rest of the structure was less sharp. It adds to the composition in making the subject of the image so good. But I wonder how you got the entire propeller so sharp, but the mechanism holding the prop shaft is all blurry. How did you achieve this?
Me? I would have liked to see the detail more in the “bottom of the boat” towards the top, but that’s because I’m curious, not because it would add to the photo - what you did makes the photo balanced, top left is dark, and bottom/right seems larger, and I enjoy that detail.
From the angle you shot the photo at, I imagine that this how you managed to get a clear sky. Part of me wishes you had clouds in the sky, but another part of me feels that would detract from the image.
I fully accept the depth of field, but to me it’s annoying that so much of the spider is blurry. I wish the spider and the “bug?” were sharper, so I could see more detail. I also can’t get oriented - is this on a wall, as I think you said? Are we viewing the bottom of the spider? Not sure.
I suppose it would work either way, but this was a thread on dof so… and of course shooting insects with a macro lens, unless you are focus stacking, which requires subject to be perfectly still, not in the middle of action, as this one was warping it… tends to have shallow depth of field.
I prefer the mood over detail in this one.
Spider caught his prey. He is doing mission impossible maneuver and feeding of it. Haven’t you ever seen a spider and how they move and hunt?
Nope, never seen a spider to watch how it moves and hunts.
D.O.F. - I would prefer to see the whole spider, sharp and clear, but it’s your photo, not mine. All I can write, is how I react to it.
Please don’t ban him, regardless of what he wrote.
He’s still a valuable contributor to the forum.
If he writes negative things about me, which I also receive by email, so be it.
Hi George. I did pay attention but it was a door frame and avoiding that one would have incurred more distractions. The main reason for the shot was a demonstration for a lecture on DoF, not to win prizes 
