Any know a plugin/workflow for Photoshop to add LF feel to 35mm photos?

[Daniel_Buck]

Oh, I found a few more images for comparison. This first image was taken with a single shot (a normal photo), 85mm at f1.2 (a very fast lens indeed!) The 2nd image was taken from the same exact position, but I swapped the 85mm for a 300mm f2.8 and shot a grid of images. This is essentially simulating what a much larger chip/film would do to DOF, like a large format camera.

Now, I usually don't stitch with the 300mm because I like the effect better when it's a wider view (the 85mm stitched can easilly be as wide as a 24mm lens). With a long lens shot you expect the background to be blured, but on a wider view the heavy defocusing is more apparent as not being normal. But I did this as a comparison with the 300 to show someone who just would not believe that a stitched 300/2.8 would have more background blur than the super fast 85/1.2. Somewhere I've got images of a single 28mm shot next to a stitched shot from the 85/1.2, but I can't seem to find it right now.

[marshallarts]

Daniel, those are some awesome shots. I love your technique

The 4x5 feel I was after was indeed the shallow DoF. I should have been more specific.

[rdenney]

Daniel, those are some awesome shots. I love your technique

The 4x5 feel I was after was indeed the shallow DoF. I should have been more specific.

Thanks for that. You've already gotten good advice on that one. The reason it caused the hubbub was that it's the opposite objective of many and probably most large-format photographers. For most of us, the controls of the camera and the size of the film is a way to make things sharp and richly detailed, not blurry.

If your subjects are the only thing in the focus plane, and if everything else is uniformly (or sufficiently) distant, you might be able to do something simple, like selecting the subjects, inverting the selection, and then applying a gaussian blur. If you have scene elements that smoothly depart the focus plane, it is much more difficult.

Rick "good luck" Denney

[Daniel_Buck]

For most of us, the controls of the camera and the size of the film is a way to make things sharp and richly detailed, not blurry.

a good portion of us like the blurry soft images too, just look at all the petzval and other type posts on here I like everything thing in focus sometimes, and sometimes I like only a portion of the image to be in focus