Photography Thailand Forum

[gregoire]

Getting permission to take her picture was a very long negociation. I had to assure her she would look pretty many times.

Mamiya 645 Pro TL, Fuji 160 ISO Negative film pushed to 400 ISO. Shot on a tripod at f/2.8 with an 80mm lens (50mm equiv.) at what must have been a very very slow shutter speed. Scanned on Epson 4990.

Focus is off (it's on her ears or even a bit further) which happens to me all the time with this camera and drives me nuts. Of course, it was very very low light and I couldn't see a thing in the viewfinder but still.

Anybody shoot manual focus medium format wide open (I just love the bokeh on the Mamiya 80mm at f/2.? How do you focus??? Is it my poor eyesight? My 645E had a kind of adjustement ring like on any modern SLR that compensates for eyesight and I definitely needed to push that thing pretty far (-3 or 4). I was still getting some misses with that though. Should I get a focusing screen adapted to my eyesight? Would that really help? Or is it just that medium format can't really be accurately focused accurately in the field at such wide apertures...

[Marc Schultz]

It is possible between the time you focused and shot the picture the model moved a little bit causing the focus point to move from her eyes to her ears and that your focus was actually spot on. But when you are shooting wide open you have very little DOF disparity to play with anyway. I often shoot with more than DOF than desired as you can always perform selective blurring during digital post production later if you like. I hope that helps.

[gregoire]

Selective blurring is a LOT of work though if it's a complex scene, isn't it? And does it look natural?

[ThaiWorld]

Well done Gregoire. I love low light pictures and your colors are great.
If I have to be picky, as it was a posed picture, you could have asked to the lady to move a little bit to avoid the pole and to be closer to her flowers to have more of them in the background.