Shooting wide open.

[Wayne Crider]

Have you ever had the experience where you shot wide open, and the combination of the falloff of your lens and bokeh with limited dof produced an amazing photograph. I ask, as I've been thinking about doing a handheld "wide open" study of subject matter in this manner. I'm also talking outside of doing portraits. Anyways, I hope that I am explaining this correctly. If you get the idea, I'd love to see examples or hear your story if anyone has any to get me motivated.

[J. P. Mose]

Wayne,

I don't have examples to e-mail you but shots taken with a 8", 10" or 12" f/2.9 Pentac wide open are breathtaking. 8" Pentacs appear on Ebay fairly regularly but the larger ones are very rare. I know that Jeff at Lens & Repro has a 10" Pentac for sale. An 8" Pentac and a 4x5 Graflex SLR may be the ticket!

This is a good question...I will look forward to hearing other responses.

J. P. Mose

[J. P. Mose]

Excuse my poor English! "An" instead of "a" should be in front of 8" and 10". I need more coffee!

[Jim Rhoades]

Check out some Sally Mann books.

[Steven Dusk]

Nothing is better (when you get it right...) Why have all of these camera movements if you can't show them off once in a while! Anyone with a digicam can get everything in focus ;-)

http://www.duskart.com/photography/l2003/20030330englandlondonwellingtonarch03-l.jpg

http://www.duskart.com (http://www.duskart.com/" target="new)

[Ralph Barker]

Depending on the lens, the wide-open look can be quite effective with some subjects. The older, soft-focus portrait lenses seem particularly adept at this. Whether hand-holding is a good idea is a separate question, of course, and highly camera/photographer dependent. ;-)

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

I have regularly used a 150mm f/2.8 Xenotar, 8" f/2.9 Pentac (which JP mentions), and 11" and 22" Dallmeyer Petzval lenses open wide for "alternative process" portraiture. The Dallmeyers (and all Petzvals) and the Pentac produce very beautiful and very idiosyncratic bokeh. The Xenotar wide open produces images which are noticeably sharper , but a bit "clinical" and maybe even boring IMHO.

I have a few sample images, but I am not sure how to post them on this forum.

[Bruce Watson]

I've had the experience. Whether or not the photograph is amazing is up to the viewer. This example of some dogwood blossoms (http://www.achromaticarts.com/flowers/04.html) is from a Fujinon 240A at f/11.

The background is an ugly red clay bank with sparse grass on it. It was only a few feet away, but in the print it looks like a beautifully mottled and rumpled dark gray backdrop. DOF has its uses, absolutely.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I often shoot wide open handheld with the 135/3.5 Planar on my Tech V. I'm not sure if I have one of those conveniently scanned, but here's a handheld stage shot with the 150/4.5 Xenar wide open--

http://www.echonyc.com/~goldfarb/temp/JustUs.jpg

[Ole Tjugen]

http://www.bruraholo.no/bilder/Dam.jpg

Schneider Xenar 300/4.5 at f:4.5, full swings on Technika III 5x7".

[domenico Foschi]

http://dfoschisite.com/images/landscapes/lhomagetoshiele.jpg
(http://www.dfoschisite.com)

[Wayne Crider]

Yes the shots here show exactly what i mean. I think Domenico's shot shows my idea a little more. What was that lens Domenico?

[domenico Foschi]

If it's the Homage to Shiele image(i can't see my own post!), i shot it with an 8 inch dallmeyer f 3.5 , a Petzval design.
You can find them on e-bay, many times at prices too high for lenses produced in the 1860's .
Mine was $ 350.00 about 4 years ago.
I have mine fitted to my speed graphic so i can use all its potential for narrow depth of field and incredible sharpness in the center of the image.
I have many modern lenses , but this is the lens that better mirrors what i want in my images.

[Joe Smigiel]

Wayne,

Here are a couple examples shot with an 8 3/4" Verito f/4 lens at about f/4.5 IIRC.

http://my.net-link.net/~jsmigiel/images/C_VDB_72.jpg

http://my.net-link.net/~jsmigiel/images/DF01_72.jpg



Wide open at f/4 the Verito lenses are extremely soft and diffused. By f/8, the diffused effect largely is gone and the lenses become relatively sharp. I think they work best somewhere between f/4.5 to f/5.6.

Joe

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

http://pratt.edu/~jgreenbe/ambro.jpg

This is an ambrotype shot with an Dallmeyer Petzval at f/4.

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

Two examples of a Xenotar shot at f/2.8.

http://motamedi.info/dags/HouseDag.jpg

http://motamedi.info/dags/CouchDag.jpg

Both 1/4 plate daguerreotypes.

[John D Gerndt]

I can’t supply an image but I can tell you this bewitching combination of sharp and un-sharp is what drew me into large format. And it did it not by showing me right away what was making those images work the way they do. What I was seeing was a bunch of different things in different images. Some of it turned out to be lens formulas, some if it swing/tilt, some of it, and really the best of it, turned out to be just the use of more damn film! I still can’t describe it but the tonality of large format images has a look that is smooth and touchable. Ironically I was and still must use the term sharp for this effect. It is almost like a fetish, that which you are focusing on is so much the focus of your mind and feels so real while everything else around it is a dream.

It is good to remember that Photographs can tell you more by sometimes limiting the amount of information available. We large and ultra large format users crop as naturally as the sun rises but we often just stop down to f64 as a matter of course. It may be refreshing to cast off the cloth for a while, change speed and blurr some stuff. Tonality has got my attention right now though and I see it best in big sheets of film. I don’t know if I’ll be hand-holding any ULF this year.

Cheers,

[Wayne Crider]

Jason, the two examples of a Xenotar shot at f/2.8 didn't come thru for me. Post a link if you can. Thanks

Domenico, the shot of yours that I was commenting on was different then the above one posted now. I found it thru a link to your site. It was a opening shot of a tree branch and top of a house. I loved the falloff, and I can't describe it but the picture has an mood to it. Was it intentional in the printing or was it a dark day?

Very nice Joe. Beautiful pictures.

I produced a table of dof for my two lenses [( http://medfmt.8k.com/brondof.html ) (scroll down and plug your values in)] and now am ready to go and do some shooting. Thanks for all the examples and motivation.

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

here they are again, using a different server.

http://pratt.edu/~jgreenbe/house.jpg

http://pratt.edu/~jgreenbe/couch.jpg

[domenico Foschi]

Hi Wayne,
I am sorry my posting was confusing , i have been wired not to understand html and all the computer lingo and i don't know what happened there.
The image you are talking about was taken with a Symmar-s 210 f 5.6 on 4 x 5 film.
I used some back swing to have selective focus on two areas of the image at different distances from the film plane , and the mood you saw is both because of overcast, and printing .
For a more evident selective focus you will achieve a more pronounced effect on 8 x 10 film, preferebly using a large aperture lens( f. 4.5-5.5). Also, selective focus will be more visible and have more impact on larger scale prints.
Have fun, selective focus has tought me that every single square inch of the image is important , and every little detail has to be weighted at the picture taking stage just as in the printing stage.