I have taken quite a few photographs for Marshfield Ice Cream but they recently asked me if I would like to have a go at doing some filming for them. Until a month or so ago I hadn’t realised my stills camera could shoot video so I have had a lot to learn. I still have a lot to learn but this is my first attempt.
This image was taken in a local hospital earlier today and demonstrates the effective use of a large lens aperture f1.4 to isolate the two subjects in the foreground from the out of focus background. The way a lens renders out of focus detail is referred to its ‘bokeh‘. If you look closely you will see that the large haggered looking subject on the right has one eye in focus while the other is out of focus. This shallow ‘depth of field’ is also associated with larger lens apertures.
According to the Keywords used in the image metadata the smaller and more attractive subject is a Sylvie Goldsmith while the the larger subject is of no interest to the viewer and quite rightly goes un-named. The larger subject would also benefit from some serious work in Photoshop.
In case you are worried the rough looking subject on the right will be teaching at Bath University as normal today.
Bokeh and the newborn baby (Sylvie)
Rather than packing a point and shoot digital camera when we go on holiday I always like to take one of my veteran film cameras. These cameras still take lovely photographs which have a quality that digital lacks. Most of the pictures taken during the trip to Bangladesh were shot with my twin lens Mamiya C330 rather than the digital SLR that sat gathering dust in the bag next to it.
This year I took my Hasselblad 500 CM, on holiday, the children didn’t appreciate its fine Carl Zeiss optics nor the square picture format. They hated the way everything was back to front and didn’t much like not knowing what they had taken until we returned home. I loved taking every single frame.
The real beauty of this vintage 40 year old camera is that it is completely compatible with modern digital camera backs so, when I want to take a digital shot I just remove the film back and put a digital one on.
Maybe next year I will take the large format Sinar
Grace getting to grips with the Hasselblad. Picture taken with an Apple telephone
