Photoshop or soft focus filter? Which is best?

The unsoftened image can be found here.

Back in the days that I shot film for the local newspaper, I played around with soft focus images. Soft focus does not mean out-of-focus. A true soft focus image is a blend of sharp image and a soft one. Soft focus images glow, the highlights may bleed into the surroundings, but these images have a sharpness that gives them the punch missing from simple blurry shots.

Some photographers used to try and produce the soft focus effect in the darkroom. This method didn't work well. One works with a negative in the darkroom with the result that the shadows bled into the highlights. For instance, bright teeth (high key areas in an image) were darkened by the bleeding of colour or tone from the surrounding areas.

I found that a Nikon Soft Focus No. 1 filter screwed onto the front of a lens worked best. These filters were perfectly clear with a pattern of diffusing dots scattered over the filter surface. The result was a Nikon sharp image with a soft glow. It was a very nice effect.

Now that I am shooting digital, I thought I'd like to try recreating the soft focus effect using Photoshop. I searched the web for ideas and tried a lot. They all, for one reason or another, failed to deliver the look I was searching for.

Then I found one site that had a method that was pretty good. I felt it produced a fine look that one could confuse, if one didn't look too closely, with the results achieved using the old Nikon filter.

Not one to rip off another blogger, here is link to the site with the soft focus effect instructions. Enjoy.

Link --- Soft-Focus Emulation in Photoshop

Kaleidoscopes for pictures with a '60s feel

Photography is about fun. Kaleidoscopes are about fun. When I found one of the cardboard toys in my basement on the weekend I immediately wondered what would happen if I tried to shoot pictures using the old thing.

When playing with stuff like this remember to try different lenses. For instance, I found that I got the results I was looking for with the kaleidoscope when using my lens zoomed to 105mm. The wide angle rendered an image trapped in a black circle. If you can control the f/stop, play with this, too.

The toy of the psychedelic generation pumped out some really neat shots. I learned that if you have an iPhone, there is an app for taking pictures that emulate my kaleidoscope. Check out Kooleido for your iPhone, if interested.

And of course, there is always Photoshop. For high quality results, Photoshop may be the best answer. Start with a fine quality image and let the software take it from there.

Still, there is something cool about using the real thing. It's a fun blast from the past.

34-month-old shooter

Smile grampa Bill.

 
Fiona is only 34-months-old, but that is old enough to start learning how to handle a camera in my book. She has taken so many pictures with my Canon S90 she now calls it her black camera.

Only 34-months-old, Fiona loves cameras.

Last night she wanted to take a picture with her camera. I gave Fiona the Canon and warned her to keep her fingers off the lens. Her other grandfather started hamming for the camera and the little kid had a subject.We watched as she composed her picture and snap. She had her shot.

My Canon is a pretty solid camera but I watch Fiona very carefully when she is playing photographer. I think the risk is worth it. I hope it teaches her a little responsibility.

I also hope it helps her develop her photographic skills. She seems to have potential.

Shooting those ceremonial moments

Personally, I like the "moment captured" type of photo but often folk want a traditional "smile for the camera" picture. This is often the case when shooting events: weddings, baptisms, retirements, and the like.

When it comes to these pictures, you should have an edge over the hired professional shooter. You know the subjects. You are a friend. Getting a good, warm smile should be easy. Thanks to the instant feedback offered by digital cameras, you will know when you have the picture locked up. Don't stop shooting until you're happy with the picture. But, possibly break your shoot into two or more takes.

If getting the right image is difficult, don't subject your friends to the "just one more" torture. Take a break. Give your subjects a rest. Don't tell them that you are not happy with the pictures. Just move on. Later, try again without making too big a deal out of it. Keep the shoot relaxed and the good images should just flow.

Bright, contrasty sunlight mixed with shade is tough to shoot.

If you are shooting outside, look for open shade. Harsh sunlight makes for harshly lit images. In a word: ugly. Inside, look for well lit areas with clean light. Stay away from incandescents that turn subjects orange or cool lights that render folk with a ghoulish blue hue.

Lastly, watch for props. The couple above are celebrating their retirement, of that there is no question. Incorporate the prop into the picture neatly, with as little wasted space as possible. Keep your picture tight and get immediately to story at hand.

Keeping your shots tight and not requiring a lot of cropping after the fact will keep images, even from small point-and-shoots, large and detailed enough for at least an eight by ten inch print.

Tools to improve your pictures: Colour, composition, subject placement, depth of field

I would never have noticed this picture if it hadn't been for my 33-month-old granddaughter messing about with my hens and chicks. When I got down to her level, in order to get her away from my plants, I saw the view that had drawn her there.

The tall stalk is the first sign of a flower forming. The pink top is clearly the centre of interest of my picture. I carefully positioned the pointy, pink tip in front of darker, brown gap in the solid mat of hens and chicks. This hid the gap and took advantage of the contrast, making the pink tip "pop" free of the image. Try to actively position the subject of your pictures. To accomplish this, shift the camera position. Always note how the foreground relates to the background. This is important. Remember, you have a lot of control --- use it!

Using the rule of thirds, the pink tip is approximately placed at one of the intersection points. This is an example of classic placement of a centre of interest. It's a classic approach because it works.

Another trick used to attract the eye while making the subject jump out from the image is the use of a shallow depth field. The foliage in the background is gently out-of-focus. Personally, I often find it distracting when backgrounds are too far out-of-focus. I don't want to obscure what is present in the background, I just want to divert attention from the background to the foreground.

Of course, colour and tone are also used here to attract the eye. The bright pink is a natural for attracting the eye, especially when placed on a green background of just about the opposite shade on the colour wheel. The bright highlights on the edges of the developing blossom also work to attract and hold the viewer's attention.

Lastly, keeping the subject, the pink-tipped stalk, large in the image underlines the subject's importance. When composing a picture, always consider image size in the final image. Getting close to the subject, as I did, makes the subject relatively large compared to the other stuff in your image. The subject doesn't always have to be the biggest thing in your pictures. Just keep in mind that, to a great extent, you control the size of your subject through the choice of lens (wide angle or telephoto) and the shooting distance you choose when positioning the subject in front of your lens.

This is a simple picture but I like it. It captures the beauty of a spreading patch of hens and chicks --- a beauty that goes unnoticed all too often. Now, grab your camera and head out to the garden; I am.

Be brave and save the long lens for lions

Bugs are surprising, especially in photos. Their wings are so delicate, their bodies prickly with stiff, sometimes colourful, hairs. They are just generally creatures from another place --- from a world too small to see.

When I got interested in photography taking good pictures of bugs was difficult, and it was expensive. Today all that has changed. Most point and shoot cameras have macro settings, often the icon for close-up photography is a flower, and many cameras will shift into their macro setting automatically. What could be easier?

What is left for the photographer? Answer: getting close. Try and capture a big image, one that reveals details generally hidden by the bug's small size. Bees and wasps are good subjects if you are careful and don't get them agitated. They themselves are very colourful right off the bat and then you have the colourful flowers on which they feed. Perfect.

Turning a weakness into a strength

My wife is not fond of hostas. Just a bunch of green leaves, she says. I, on the other hand, love 'em. I see colour, mostly green I grant you, but many have wonderful splashes of yellow and others sport dashes of creamy white.

I love the way the expand quickly in the spring, claiming the entire area of the garden they occupy as their own. The leaves swirl and overlap and, to me, they are as beautiful as a large, colourful flower.

When the hosta flowers appear in late summer, small purple flowers on long stems, their look is overshadowed by the plant's leaves. Still, the flowers are a nice addition to the dramatic, hosta presentation.

Capturing what I see when I look at a hosta means getting in close. It means keeping all in crisp focus. It means finding and capturing the mad swirls and twisting splashes of colour.

And this is a job than can be handled with aplomb by almost any point-and-shoot. I used my Canon S90 but I can't think of a PAS camera that wouldn't rally to this challenge. It is not just the aperture, the f/stop, that governs depth of field, deep focus in an image, it is the size of the sensor.

35mm cameras had more depth of field than their large two and a quarter brethren. Today's digital PAS cameras have even more depth of field than their 35mm counterparts. So much depth of field poses its own set of problems but here it is a solution and not a curse.