John, that's a beautiful composition and you have made the most of the
light - browns do very well in warm light. The clearer image @ f/5.6 isn't
surprising, you had '"just enough" depth of field and the actual MTF
(Modulation Transfer Function) in a prime lens is usually best when near
wide open and decreases as the aperture is closed down, when the diffraction
limit is reached. The trick is in adjusting focus so that the depth of
field is "just enough" at the largest possible aperture.
Regards,
David "Routemeister" Thompson
http://picasaweb.google.com/david.routemeister

John - Pa. wrote in message
...
More experiments with still-life and interior lighting. This was done
with halogen work-lights and processed as "incandescent" white balance
through Bibble software.

I also spent some time trying to find a good depth-of-field setting.
The total depth of the subject was about 9" and it was 3' in front of
the background wall and about 4.5' from the camera. I wanted the
entire subject in focus, but the background as blurred as possible.
This was shot with a Canon f1.4 50mm lens, and I did a whole series in
2/3-stop increments from f1.4 through f18. I ended up with this f5.6
as my preferred shot. The f1.4 just couldn't keep the entire subject
in focus, and of course the smallest lens openings made the background
sharper and more distracting than I wanted.

The thing I found most interesting was that in a couple of cases, a
larger stop produced a better image than a smaller on. For example,
this f5.6 was noticeably clearer than the f7.1 shot. I'm not sure why
that would be.

JD



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