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My uncle raises dogs, and I went to help him out this week. His puppies weren’t selling very well, and the puppies’ pictures were a bit outdated, (Puppies are known for not staying puppies very long!) so I managed to get the job of photographing wiggly little puppies! I had the idea of using their Christmas tree as a background with the Christmas lights blurred to make nice “bokeh”. I only had my kit lens with me 🙁 I wish so badly that I had brought my old Russian Zenit 58mm f/2 lens (I wrote some about it here.), or even my Pentax 50mm f/2 lens. Come to think of it, I also have a cheap 100mm f/4 macro lens that probably would have been better since it has more focal length. However, I am glad that I had autofocus, which none of the other lenses would have had. This headshot is one of my favorites, it makes better bokeh because of the longer focal length used. (Most of the other shots didn’t have such large out-of-focus circles, since they were taken at a wider angle to be able to get the whole puppy into the frame. [See the second image])
I knew that a general recipe for good bokeh is:
- The more distance between the subject and the background the better.
- The longer the focal length the better.
- The lower the aperture the better. (Which is why I was wishing for my f/2 prime lens!)
Since I was shooting in their living room, I didn’t have a whole lot of space to work with. 🙁 The puppy was sitting on a table about 6 feet from the Christmas tree, and I was at the far end of the living room using as much zoom as possible. 🙂 Another thing living rooms are notorious for is bad lighting… It was dark in there! We don’t often think much about it till we see the camera meter blinking and the shutter speed showing at 1/2 a second! (Another reason to want an f/2 lens, instead of my kit lens whose maximum aperture is f/5.6!) I did manage to take over a lamp stand with 3 bulbs which could put off a decent amount of light, but I was still shooting at ISO 5000-6400 for the whole photo-shoot. (Here’s where Pentax’s low-light abilities really shine, I would never dream of shooting at ISO 6400 with my Canon T3, the noise levels would be unacceptably high.) I was shooting in jpeg, since it was just a quick shoot, and I was taking 100’s of pictures of a total of 6 different puppies! (Unfortunately, that same “wonderful” Pentax camera isn’t very good at guessing the correct White Balance, so I ended up editing them all in Lightroom anyway! They needed sharpening and NR anyway, so it wasn’t really that big of a problem) At least jpeg files are only about 1/2 the size, so file transfer times were reduced if nothing else.
This particular puppy is an English Cream Retriever, I think they were about 8 weeks old.
The second picture is another of my favorites. This family plays handbells, so it’s only natural to incorporate them into some of the shots. The puppy wouldn’t stand up, so we devised a way of making it get up, and it turned out quite adorably!
My sister thinks that the “beautiful” bokeh is distracting, what do you think?
EXIF Data:
First Picture:
Shutter Speed – 1/80
Aperture – f/5.6
ISO Speed – 5000
Focal Length – 135mmSecond Picture:
Shutter Speed – 1/125
Aperture – f/5.6
ISO Speed – 5000
Focal Length – 100mm- This topic was modified 54 years, 11 months ago by .
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So cute! Especially the second one.
My sister thinks that the “beautiful” bokeh is distracting, what do you think?
Since you just tell you took these photos with a Christmas tree for background, it’s easy to understand that all those bright spots are Christmas lights. But not knowing that, it’s harder to guess what those bright spots are… I think the second picture is better because of the greater depth of field that shows more details in the background.
but I was still shooting at ISO 5000-6400 for the whole photo-shoot. (Here’s where Pentax’s low-light abilities really shine, I would never dream of shooting at ISO 6400 with my Canon T3,
Wow, that’s nice! Trust me, I don’t dream either to shoot at ISO 6400 with my Canon T3. 🙂
- This reply was modified 54 years, 11 months ago by .
I think the second picture is better because of the greater depth of field.
Are you saying it’s nicer because you can tell what the background is??
Yeah, not to mention that Canon doesn’t even give you the option of 1/3 step ISO settings, so you can’t select ISO 5000 if you wanted to! It jumps from ISO 3200 to 6400.
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say.
so you can’t select ISO 5000 if you wanted to! It jumps from ISO 3200 to 6400.
Hum, even if ISO 5000 would exist on my T3, I don’t think I would play with it often!
Hum, even if ISO 5000 would exist on my T3, I don’t think I would play with it often!
Agreed! It’s useful though to be able to change the ISO in 1/3 stop increments, that’s something I often wished my Canon had.
I like the first picture better personally, because the light seems more even and it isn’t so dark. However, both of the pictures seem much to grainy.
Yes, the pictures are a bit grainy, as I mentioned, they were taken at ISO 5000! It’s partly my fault, because I didn’t take the time to sharpen properly, I used the built-in sharpening from FastStoneImageViewer which doesn’t allow masking, it sharpens everything, including the noise… 🙁
(I did sharpen it in Lightroom as part of my regular work-flow, the sharpening in FastStone was applied after resizing the picture.)
Great shots despite the circumstance!
I don’t find the bokeh distracting. You can tell they are Christmas lights. I would like it if they were warmer in color (orange and red mixed in with the blue and white). And it would be better if the bokeh circles weren’t so sharp around the edges, but that is a lens issue (see http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm).
It is a bummer that the T3 can’t do 1/3 ISO increments (http://www.ppmag.com/web-exclusives/2011/05/canonrebelt3i.html), but thankfully that’s not how it is on all Canon cameras.
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