My friend and I were out shooting film today for our art class. My recent aquire, sigma 120-300, was feeling left out. So I took out with us, and I still love it.
JIm, I might of dropped it down to ISO 400 but i was shooting handheld so I didn't really feel like running the risk of with too slow of a shutter speed. I know the rule that the minimum shutter speed should be the focal length of the lens but I feel with heavier glass and handheld that the extra shutter speed helps.
Mako, I would of liked a bit less of a frown but no where near a smile. I really like the hair though. Agreed though on shooting it at 300.
Nikko, thanks. I might take it into PS play with the contrast a little bit mainly on the face and hair to see if I can separate them from the background a bit more.
If you think in terms of goals the best use of Bokeh is to allow the context of the background to be seen but not to the extent that the Bokeh itself becomes attractive.
When Bokeh is so insanely great it pulls attention off the foreground it tends to defeat the purpose of using selective DOF, which is to isolate and make the person in foreground the star of show as on a seamless background studio shot.
But that's not happening here because the Bokeh, while pleasing, isn't so insanely great it is distracting. But in terms of overall composition the setting is overwhelming the subject. That works great if the background is something like the Grand Canyon or the Eiffel Tower, but how much rocks, fuzzy-wuzzy grass, and blown out sky do you really need to convey the context of the location? For me, about this much...
If you were to calculate the % of pixels dedicated to the subject vs. background it would probably be pretty close to 50% / 50% in that edit — an even balance — vs the original where the subject was only about 20%. An even tighter crop would put more emphasis on the subject, but with the subject using 80% if the pixels and 20% used for the background the context of the location is lost.
In a series of three shots I'd start with a landscape oriented shot with the subject even smaller than your original, putting her to the side or even looking over her shoulder and the scenery to establish the context of the location. For that shot I'd want to shoot at the hyperfocal distance so viewer would see subject and background in focus.
For the second shot of the series I'd use my first crop, a medium 50/50 balance.
For the third shot, having already established the location and the subject's relationship it in the full length medium shot, I'd move closer for a H&S view with very little background...
The Bokeh helps to make the background context seen in the 50/50 shot but not to the point of being distracting and in the last tight H&S crop it really isn't noticed at all because to turns the background into one similar to a painted muslin.
Just some food for thought for using Bokeh as part of a more comprehensive holistic storytelling sequence of shots.
