I knew my angle of view from edge to edge. One only gets to know this by making thousands upon thousands of frames. I see framelines
instinctually. Don’t worry ... if you practice ... you’ll get there.
Know your thirty-five.
Know your fifty.
In no time you’ll be shooting at the hip like the masters.
At least I hope you are.
Back to the depth.
At f/8 I knew my thirty-five-‘lux would give me about
four feet of depth.
Look at the example of this lens at left. This is the “depthof field scale.” Know it.
Love it.
Make it your fucking friend.
Because it wants to be your friend.
In this example I put four feet on the f/8 mark to the left
of center as I knew the first guy frame left was about that
distance away from me. The f/8 mark on the right side of
the lens was at eight feet. Given that I knew that
everything between four and eight feet would be
reasonably sharp.
You’ll also see that if would have wanted to single out the man on the left I could have chosen f/1.4 – where this is almost no depth of field given
being that close to my subjects. If you can estimate at f/1.4 and get it as tight as a duck’s ass, you’re a stud.
But it really wasn’t about the man on the left. Nor the woman in the centre. Nor the man on the right.
It was about all three.
coco
(coco)
#1