Can prosumer take good depth of field effect shots


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ralfale

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Dec 25, 2006
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Pretty amazed with this effect which my normal camera cant take. Thinking of getting a better cam. Can experts here advise on this? Any particular model or specs i should look out for in achieving this effect?

Thanks in advance! :thumbsup:
 

As long

your subject small enough,
you go close enough,
the background is far enough
and you are using widest aperture with the longest focal length lens

you can get shallow DOF effect from any cameras
 

As long

your subject small enough,
you go close enough,
the background is far enough
and you are using widest aperture with the longest focal length lens

you can get shallow DOF effect from any cameras

Hi,

What about bigger object like human with blur background?
Is there restriction in this case?
Many thanks for the effort to reply.
 

Most of the times, it's pretty difficult as the aperture for such cameras are small and it would give you a much longer DOF than what you want to achieve for the bokeh shots.

Often, such photogs would resort to PP to get the desired effects.
 

I'm not sure about prosumer camera, cos I don't own one, but for a full length human, on a 1.5x DSLR, you need at least a 90mm lens shoot at wide open, if you using a longer lens, the effect will be more pronounced.
 

Pretty amazed with this effect which my normal camera cant take. Thinking of getting a better cam. Can experts here advise on this? Any particular model or specs i should look out for in achieving this effect?

Thanks in advance! :thumbsup:
if you can create blurred background or not does not depend on prosumer or pro camera.... it depends on your sensor size.
it is practically impossible to achieve shallow DOF (and hence blurred background) with the tiny sensors installed in most point and shoot cameras. What you need is a sensor of minimum APS size. you find this size in DSLR but maybe also in some of the bigger point and shoot. A D40 would work nice and this camera is considered consumer....
 

I suppose you mean shallow DOF.

Prosumer cameras can only achieve shallow DOF with small objects. Bigger objects require you to stand further to shoot or use a shorter focal length and due to the relatively short actual focal length used on prosumer cameras (due to the small image sensor), you cannot achieve a distinctively shallow DOF.

So for human portraits (even half body), a shallow DOF cannot be achieved by a prosumer camera.

Below are a couple of pictures where a shallow DOF is achieved by a Nikon Coolpix 5700 (a prosumer camera) because the object is small which allows you to go very near to shoot with a very short focal length or still quite near even when the camera is fully zoomed).

dscn0070a533framenm0.jpg


dscn0052it9.jpg
 

I see ... so can a D40 achieve such results? I can get a 2nd hand D40 at classified :)
 

I see ... so can a D40 achieve such results? I can get a 2nd hand D40 at classified :)

Again, it depends on the subject size (i.e. what you're shooting).

You may also need lenses with apertures bigger than F/2.8 and these lenses are expensive. For portraits (half body), you would need F/1.8 or bigger. For full body portrait, you need an even bigger aperture.

Also don't forget that D40 can only auto focus with AFS lenses and many big aperture lenses are not AFS lenses.

Check out the DOF calculator : http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

You can approximate the shooting distance by doing some calculation yourself in the following manner :

D40 sensor size = approximately 24mm x 16mm

If the subject is for e.g. 80cm (half body portrait), then the magnification factor necessary to get it into your image sensor in portrait framing is :

24mm/800mm = 3/100

If you're using 50mm focal length, then the approximate shooting distance slightly further than :

50 / (3/100) = 1667mm = 1.67m
 

if you can create blurred background or not does not depend on prosumer or pro camera.... it depends on your sensor size.
it is practically impossible to achieve shallow DOF (and hence blurred background) with the tiny sensors installed in most point and shoot cameras. What you need is a sensor of minimum APS size. you find this size in DSLR but maybe also in some of the bigger point and shoot. A D40 would work nice and this camera is considered consumer....

I'll like to correct you here. The Four Thirds sensor size, which is smaller than the APS-C size can archive this too. :)

If you wanna play with DOF, DSLR is best. Since you can go for prosumer, size is about the same, so just go for DSLR.
 

I see ... so can a D40 achieve such results? I can get a 2nd hand D40 at classified :)

depending on the lens that you are using to take the photo.

get at least a 105 VR micro lens will be prefered if u getting the D40
 

Thanks guys! I shall explore more on DSLR and consider a 2nd hand one to try.
 

I'll like to correct you here. The Four Thirds sensor size, which is smaller than the APS-C size can archive this too. :)

If you wanna play with DOF, DSLR is best. Since you can go for prosumer, size is about the same, so just go for DSLR.
of course the Four Thirds can do as well... i took APS size in a more general way.... not just Nikon size sensor... also the canon sensor is a bit smaller than nikon...

what i meant to say is that not the level of camera (consumer, prosumer, pro) is important but rather the sensor size...
 

a prosumer will have limited dof. basically the only time when you can get reasonable dof with regards to humans, is when your human is damn far far away from the background.. mainly because of what has been mentioned - two factors, primarily sensor size, and secondarily the maximum aperture for most prosumers across the board is limited. the best you can do with regards to humans is to extend to maximum zoom, try to get your subject to stand far far away from background, and then shoot with wide open lens.

if you're talking about MACRO, however, then prosumer can do it, just shift to macro mode and do the same thing.

ironically, my favourite dragonfly shot is taken with a prosumer:

original.jpg


without any close-up filters, etc.. just cropping and reasonable sharpening.

some people like using prosumers to shoot macro.. since dof is what you need most of the time for quick shutter speeds (relative)..
 

Nice.... ;p



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