DOF And Post Processing

[painperdu]

Hello everyone! This is my first post here and I'm excited to have found you guys. Thanks Darren for the great site. My confidence level has shot up immensely by soaking in a few of your tutorials. Great job!

I've read the tutorial about aperture and how it can be used to add depth of field to your shots. Wouldn't it be wiser to just shoot for as clear a shot as possible and add DOF and blurring via editing software? I just feel their is more creative leeway playing around in image processing software as long as the original shot is clear.

[googlit]

it's hard to add a very convincing amount of dof blur in a pic after the fact. If you think about it, there are varying degrees of blurriness, and it's hard to replicate it well in post-processing. your scene isn't just subject and background. it's usually foreground, midground, and background, and you can pick anywhere as your focal point.

whatever effect you're after, it's usually better to get it in-camera than try to make it happen after the fact. I would take pics both as crisp as you can and then with a shallower depth of field and play with them in post processing. you can decide for yourself which method works better.

[wulf]

You can do this to an extent but there are several reasons why getting the depth of field right in the original shot is preferable:

1. It saves a lot of time - making your computer generated blurs look convincing is time-consuming, especially if your foreground subject has fuzzy edges (eg. some flyaway hairs).

2. True depth of field gradually rolls off the focus as things get further away. Depending on the composition of the shot you can sometimes simulate this but it gets awkward, especially if you've got a range of items that need to go from pin-sharp to completely out of focus.

3. Changing the aperture isn't just about adjusting depth of field - it is also about the overall amount of light coming into the lens.

The wisest choice is probably to take several shots of the same subject and experiment with different settings.

Wulf

[Nicole]

I've read the tutorial about aperture and how it can be used to add depth of field to your shots. Wouldn't it be wiser to just shoot for as clear a shot as possible and add DOF and blurring via editing software? I just feel their is more creative leeway playing around in image processing software as long as the original shot is clear.

Personally, I like using the camera to create the effect I'm looking for. It may be a contradictory opinion, but I don't feel that a computer can completely replicate the effect that your camera settings can create (I know, a digital camera is a computer in a lot of ways, etc). There's something about actually using the features available on your camera because it's a kind of skill, and I think that 99/100 times, what you do on your camera will have a better impact than trying to replicate it on your computer.


3. Changing the aperture isn't just about adjusting depth of field - it is also about the overall amount of light coming into the lens.


This is something to remember as well, because changing the aperture is not purely about the DoF. It effects all sorts of other things too :)