bokeh exercise

One major difference between our eyes and a camera lens is that with the camera lens we can defocus areas that we do not want to attract attention to, while our nervous systems make a similar judgment with our vision. Here I have taken 2 photos, with different objects in focus, but essentially the same photo otherwise.

The first photo the focused area is on the subject up front. It is very apparent that the subject is up front because it is the area most focused.


While here the exact same area is captured, but the subject appears to be in back because that is the area that is in focus.


There are a few other items to note for this photo. First, the view with a 50mm lens on a dslr is considered a normal view, even though it translates to a 75mm lens on a full frame camera. With a wide angle lens, objects at the edges of the screen seem to get stretched out, but the overall effect of a wide angle lens seems to distort the distances laterally and things will appear closer together. With a zoom lens, the depth appears to be distorted so that items further away in terms of depth will appear to be closer than than would with a lens with less zoom. This will be illustrated in the future.