You should always shoot with your eyes wide open (at least, the one looking
through the viewfinder). But often it pays to shoot with your lens wide open,
too.
Wide apertures let in more light, so you can use a faster shutter speed in any
given light level. This is handy for anything from low-light photography to
action shooting.
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Left:
In this shot, selective focus directs the viewer's attention
to the subject's eye(s). This was made with AF SLR, using
a telephoto lens set at its widest aperture and closest focusing
distance.
Right: If the background is considerably darker than the subject,
you can use exposure to mask distractions. Photos byLynne Eodice
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Another benefit of shooting wide open is very limited depth of field. If you're
shooting a portrait, and the background is distracting, and you can't
move the subject or camera, just open the lens to its widest aperture, and the
background distractions will magically blur into insignificance. This effect
is greatest when you use a longer focal length and shoot at a close focusing
distance--shoot a head shot from 4 feet away with a 100mm lens wide-open
at f/2.8, and background distractions will vanish.
You can use this limited depth of field for more than just making background
distractions go away. Through the technique of selective focus, you can direct
the viewer's attention precisely to where you want it in the image. The
eye is drawn to what's sharp; focus carefully and throw everything else
out of focus, and the viewer can't help but be drawn to the subject. For
example, in a close-up of an animal, you can direct the viewer to the subject's
eye(s) by focusing there and throwing the rest of the head out of focus.
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This image takes advantage of selective focus and the lens-like
properties of a glass of water. Noted pro Bert Stern made this
"wine-glass" technique famous back in the 1950s with
his great image of an Egyptian pyramid reflected in the wine,
but you can produce the effect with plain water and any handy
local subject. Move in close to the glass and focus on the image
in the water, and use the camera's depth-of-field preview
to select the aperture that provides the degree of sharpness or
blur you want. For this image, the photographer just set the glass
on the window sill of a high-rise office building, and recorded
the image of the building next door. Early-morning sunlight provided
warm colors, but you might try adding food coloring to the water
in the glass for a different effect. Photo by Mike Stensvold
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You can also spice up a flower close-up by including a foreground element
and blurring it via selective focus. Just be sure the out-of-focus element enhances
the image and doesn't distract from the main subject.
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Photographing
this Muscovy duck from close range with the lens wide open blurs
the distracting background so it's no longer distracting
(tight cropping also eliminates much of the distracting background),
and the limited depth of field is adequate to cover the subject
in profile, yet direct the viewer's eye to the subject.
Canon EOS 20D digital SLR, 300mm f/4L lens, ISO 400; the exposure
was 1¼1000 at f/4 (wide open). Photo by Mike Stensvold
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Of course, there are drawbacks to shooting wide open. Limited depth of field
can be a good thing, as just explained. But it can also be a bad thing, if you
need great depth of field for a shot (in that case, use a faster film or set
a higher ISO on a digital camera, and stop the lens down). And various lens
aberrations are more evident when the lens is wide open, resulting in reduced
image quality. But all in all, today's name-brand lenses perform very
well wide open, and the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. Give it a try!
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In
this shot, selective focus directs the viewer's attention
to the subject's eye(s). This was made with AF SLR, using
a telephoto lens set at its widest aperture and closest focusing
distance. Photo
by Mike Stensvold
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Source: http://www.shutterbug.com
