# Silly Wabbit



## Cortian (Feb 6, 2018)

Wandering around the house... complain to wife "I haven't got anything to photograph!  I need something to photograph!"  Wander around some more...  Found something 







C&C welcomed.  Encouraged, in fact.

Goal here was two-fold: 1. Photograph something.  Anything   2. Experiment with DoF in full manual mode.

Tried it first with auto-ISO, which didn't want to go higher than 400.  DoF was too shallow.  E.g.: Despite the fact the focus was just in front of the eye, everything from there back was not sharp.  Bumped the ISO to 800, which allowed me to stop down to f/5.6 and keep the shutter speed at something IS could keep the shake out of.

I think I'll try it again, same subject, only with something more interesting than a vinyl window frame in the background, when I get my light back.


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## zombiesniper (Feb 6, 2018)

Good first effort and it shows how a shallow DOF isn't always your friend.

In this situation I would try both of the following and see which solution you like better.
1. Adjust the focus point to the right a bit so you can keep the composition and get the eye sharp.
2. Reset your focus point back to the centre and make sure your focus mode is in "One Shot" not a continuous focus mode. Now place the centre focus point on the eye, half press to gain focus, remain half pressed and recompose. Now fire the shutter.

These are two simple solutions to the same problem of getting the eye in focus on an off centre composition.


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## Cortian (Feb 6, 2018)

Thanks, ZS!


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## Designer (Feb 7, 2018)

Cortian said:


> 2. Experiment with DoF in full manual mode.


Your choice of subject has not been your friend.  By using something that is fuzzy, you can't easily discern where the focus falls off.  

To me, it looks like the back end of the toy is OOF, but as I wrote, kinda hard to tell for sure.  Window casing is nicely OOF though.


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## Cortian (Feb 7, 2018)

Designer said:


> Cortian said:
> 
> 
> > 2. Experiment with DoF in full manual mode.
> ...


Hmmm... (Looks...)  Could be I don't know the difference between "in focus," "kind of in focus" and "out-of-focus?"  To _me_ it looks like it's easy to tell, because, where it's in focus, you can clearly see the individual fibres.  Where it's clearly OOF, you cannot?

(Retrieves discards from trash...)

This is the one closest in composition and lighting to the one I saved:






To _my_ eye the differences in DoF are pretty clear.

But point taken & thanks for the comments.  I'll look around to see if there's something better with which to experiment with DoF.  (I do kinda like that bunny, as a subject, tho...)


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## Designer (Feb 7, 2018)

Yes.  Parts of bunny are still OOF.  Try again.


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## ac12 (Feb 7, 2018)

Stuffed animals make good practice subjects.
They say still, don't mind how long you take, and don't complain


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## ac12 (Feb 7, 2018)

The next thing to do is to work on different lighting.
Example, a reflector on the left would fill in the shadow on the left.
That reflector could be as simple as a sheet of paper or a crumpled aluminum foil that is smoothened and put on to a cardboard backer.  IOW, CHEAP and easy to make.

You can spend hours by the window with the rabbit and reflectors .


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## Cortian (Feb 7, 2018)

Thanks for the ideas, ac12!  In fact I have _just_ the cardboard, too.


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## ac12 (Feb 7, 2018)

Next get a teddy bear.
Teddy bears have their eyes in front, like a human.
So the lighting technique you learn is closer to humans, than with the wabbit with their eyes on the side.


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## ac12 (Feb 7, 2018)

The problem with the wabbit, is the long head.
With shallow DoF, and focused on the eye, the nose could be out of focus.
The wabbit exagerates the same problem with a human.

BTW, nice pix.


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## Cortian (Feb 7, 2018)

ac12 said:


> Next get a teddy bear.
> Teddy bears have their eyes in front, like a human.
> So the lighting technique you learn is closer to humans, than with the wabbit with their eyes on the side.


We have teddy bears.  Though a couple of them would be little improvement over the wabbit.



ac12 said:


> The problem with the wabbit, is the long head.
> With shallow DoF, and focused on the eye, the nose could be out of focus.
> The wabbit exagerates the same problem with a human.


*nod*



ac12 said:


> BTW, nice pix.


Thanks!

Picked up Reynolds Wrap heavy duty non-stick.  The non-stick side already has texture.  It might be dispersive enough w/o crinkling it.  I'll test it with one of my flashlights tonight.  Also picked up a can of Gorilla spray adhesive.  Already had the _perfect_ cardboard, that folds up nicely for storage/transport and is heavier material.

I will, naturally, post pictures 

I'll put all that together tomorrow, as right now I must vacuum and dust.  (Became my job upon retirement.  Now I also do it out of enlightened self-interest .)


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## ac12 (Feb 9, 2018)

Cortian said:


> I'll put all that together tomorrow, as right now I must vacuum and dust.  (Became my job upon retirement.  Now I also do it out of enlightened self-interest .)



Groan
I gotta vacuum the house also.
And wet wipe the bird feathers off the floor around their cages.


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## Cortian (Feb 9, 2018)

Got 'er done today...






I carefully laid blue painter's tape along the edges of the cardboard so the overspray wouldn't make them sticky.  I'll let the adhesive cure overnight.  Tomorrow I'll trim off the excess foil and remove the painter's tape.

_If I got it right_ I should end-up with a nicely-foldable reflector that is dispersive.


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## limr (Feb 9, 2018)

Y'know...there's also the idea that there should be as much in focus as you _want _in focus. I know the general feeling is that the entire head/face/whatever needs to be in sharp focus, but I say that depends on what you are going for. What do _you_ want it to look like? What is the look that you are going for? I think you should play with varying levels of DOF to get a sense of what _you_ like or how it affects the feeling of the image.


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## Cortian (Feb 10, 2018)

@limr, I was withholding replies to the C&Cs because I wanted to see if there'd be others.  Your observation nailed it, though.  What's in that first photo was pretty much what I was looking to get--which was that portion of the bunny's face lit and in focus, with the rest OOF and/or shadowed.  And the background OOF.

I believe the reason the eye appears to be OOF is because the surface is dull.  If you look closely (I'm looking at 160%, right now) you can see tiny threads, dust spots and surface contamination.  Plus, after just cleaning them up a bit, (gets out his magnifying headset...) I'm 99-44/100% certain those are plastic, not glass, so they're not going to get super-shiny, like real eyes, or even glass ones, anyway.


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## Gary A. (Feb 10, 2018)

ac12 said:


> The next thing to do is to work on different lighting.
> Example, a reflector on the left would fill in the shadow on the left.
> That reflector could be as simple as a sheet of paper or a crumpled aluminum foil that is smoothened and put on to a cardboard backer.  IOW, CHEAP and easy to make.
> 
> You can spend hours by the window with the rabbit and reflectors .


The Wabbitt is cute, but the lighting sucks. Start with what you have ... you have nice directional window lighting.  Move the wabbitt move the camera, turn on what's available in the room for fill. If you first learn to use/master what you have readily available ... you can get a decent/good/great image in all sorts of environments. Sure a reflector would be nice, but first work with what is available.






window lighting only





window lighting only


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## ac12 (Feb 10, 2018)

Cortian said:


> @limr, I was withholding replies to the C&Cs because I wanted to see if there'd be others.  Your observation nailed it, though.  What's in that first photo was pretty much what I was looking to get--which was that portion of the bunny's face lit and in focus, with the rest OOF and/or shadowed.  And the background OOF.
> 
> I believe the reason the eye appears to be OOF is because the surface is dull.  If you look closely (I'm looking at 160%, right now) you can see tiny threads, dust spots and surface contamination.  Plus, after just cleaning them up a bit, (gets out his magnifying headset...) I'm 99-44/100% certain those are plastic, not glass, so they're not going to get super-shiny, like real eyes, or even glass ones, anyway.



If you got what you wanted, then you did a good job.   It does not matter what other think.

As for the eyes.
Just clean the eye as best you can.  That is good enough, short of replacing the eyes with glass eyes, which would be a pain.
Here is a trick that I learned for manequins.
Try some CLEAR nail polish on the eye.  The clear polish reflects light similar to the liquid on the eye.


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## Cortian (Feb 10, 2018)

I already did a quick-and-dirty cleanup (warm-breath-and-facial-tissue method), which improved them greatly.  (Should have done that in the first place.)  After that I think I need to revisit the plastic polish question.

I'd be loath to try clear nail polish for fear of harming the thing.  I kind of like it 

I got more-or-less what I wanted.  But, still, C&C is welcome.  Just because it's what I wanted, doesn't mean it cannot be better or more interesting.

I appreciate everybody's input.  I'm getting lots of good info/ideas just from this one attempt


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## Derrel (Feb 10, 2018)

ac12 said:


> Stuffed animals make good practice subjects.
> They say still, don't mind how long you take, and don't complain



Yeah, they are very patient portrait subjects!

Maybe try to work out a tall composition as well. That's my main C&C issue...too much unused space on the left...I wanna' see more of the subject's body!

As far as DOF goes, at such close distances, even f/5.6 is in effect, a rather wide aperture value if deep DOF is the desired end result. Stopping the lens down, to f/16 or even f/22 with a telephoto lens that is magnifying the image might work pretty well. Not sure what camera or lens you're using, but I've had reasonably good luck at shutter speeds in the 1/8 second to 1/13 second range with Nikon's old-school VR stabilization on the 80-400 VR Gen 1 and the 70-200 VR (gen 1 model lens).

As with many things photographic, image stabilization is not a 100% successful endeavor; at the extremes, like at say 1/3 to 1/6 second, VR might yield only 30% good shots, and 70% junkers; the key is to shoot in Continuous release, with just one shutter button press, and to make sure to expose enough shots to get one or two critically sharp results. Typically, there will be shots that are from bad to critically sharp,and plenty of in-between frames as well.


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## ac12 (Feb 10, 2018)

With a stuffed animal, and slow shutter speed, I would use a tripod.
It will stay still, and not complain about long exposures   

The only con to the tripod is that changing camera perspective/positions, becomes more of an effort and a hassle.


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## Cortian (Feb 10, 2018)

Good idea on the continuous release mode, Derrel.

The tripod would be a non-starter for this window, ac12.  That's atop the bookcase headboard of our bed.  Right about in the middle.  Unfortunately, it's the only west-facing window, and that was the light I wanted.


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## Designer (Feb 10, 2018)

Cortian said:


> What's in that first photo was pretty much what I was looking to get--which was that portion of the bunny's face lit and in focus, with the rest OOF and/or shadowed.  And the background OOF.


Your original post was not clear as to your intentions.  Just DOF, and no specifics.  It seems to me that in DOF practice, you would explore the range and see what can be done.  When a visible portion of your subject is OOF, I naturally assume it is a mistake.  Making accurate measurements and setting up your subject/background so that you have a good handle on DOF is a reasonable exercise to pursue. 

I realize that having a portion of your subject out of focus is a "thing" these days, what with every other photographer seemingly doing that on purpose, but to me they are just experimenting and accepting what comes rather than thinking things through.


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## Cortian (Feb 10, 2018)

Designer said:


> Your original post was not clear as to your intentions.


True.  I _purposely_ left it kind of open-ended, for the reason stated earlier.



Designer said:


> It seems to me that in DOF practice, you would explore the range and see what can be done.


Certainly.  In this case I simply ran out of light.



Designer said:


> Making accurate measurements and setting up your subject/background so that you have a good handle on DOF is a reasonable exercise to pursue.


I agree entirely.

I just acquired Tamron's latest 90mm macro lens.  Believe me: Learning how to get the DoF I want is very much a big deal with me.



Designer said:


> I realize that having a portion of your subject out of focus is a "thing" these days, ...


I didn't know that was "a thing" ever, much less these days   I just did what I could with what I had to hand.

If I'd had more light I might've been able to coax more DoF out of the photo.  Or if I'd had a way to stabilize the camera.  Alas: I had what I had and that was all that I had 

But you probably haven't seen the last of that bunny.  I just haven't been able to get back to it, yet.  Had one day, since, where the light was right, but I had snow to shovel.  Haven't had the light again, since.

Thanks for your comments, Designer.


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## Gary A. (Feb 10, 2018)

Derrel said:


> ac12 said:
> 
> 
> > Stuffed animals make good practice subjects.
> ...


And don’t punch the shutter release.  Depress the button halfway ... to the edge of release, hold it, then gently squeeze the release.


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## Cortian (Feb 10, 2018)

Yeah, Gary, I've noticed I need to work on my shutter release control.


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