Just a little follow up to the original topic. The key to this problem for me was the comment made by someone, I can’t remember who now, who said words to the effect that my focus and depth of field was just the same as it had ever been with film, the reason for my anguish was that I was looking at it differently with digital and could now see the horrible truth for the first time. This actually made a great deal of sense to me, although it didn’t do much for my ego or self-esteem.
Nothing daunted, I went back out there into the Cornish wilds, determined to do better. For the last two weeks I have spent every possible hour of spare time taking shots and honing my technique. This has encompassed a variety of subjects (landscape, churches, boats), all shot hand-held (yes I know this is self-defeating but there are good reasons why I don’t use a tripod much other than for my still-life and plant pictures). And, amazingly, this period of iron discipline and self-flagellation seems to have done some good. Whereas at the time I posted the original “Anguish” thread I was getting 40-50% of my shots in focus at best, I went out yesterday for the afternoon and 80% of my frames were focussed spot-on, with good depth of field and no discernible camera shake. The best ones were actually stunning. So what made the difference? Well, I am gradually making up a set of new rules for myself, along these lines -
• Never, ever, use a shutter speed slower than the reciprocal of the focal length. I thought I could shoot handheld at 1/60s with my 80mm - well I was wrong. Just once in a while, I might get away with it.
• Really, really think about exactly where the point of focus should be. My old film sloppiness simply won’t do. In general, pre-visualise which lighter-toned object in the foreground will draw attention to itself, and make sure that you have some focus on that at least as the forward point.
• Remember the rule that there is always more depth of field behind the point of focus than in front of it (about 2/3 to 1/3 ratio, roughly). So pre-visualise the crucial plane of focus in terms of this distribution.
• Use the viewfinder with the highest possible magnification for the ground glass screen. In the case of the Hasselblad 500, this is the WLF magnifier which is 4x. The prisms and magnifying hood are all less powerful, except for the HC4 prism which is also 4x. I think that an 8x loupe would be better still, but so far I have not found one which will fit inside the WLF hood.
• Contrary to a lot of opinion, I have not found the screen with the split-prism and micro-prism surround to be very much help outdoors. It is great for still-life with close subjects, but when I have a church 60 feet away the increments on the split prism are just too slight. And that big round thing in the middle of the screen really spoils my composition. So I use a plain screen.
• Something which keeps catching me out is where I have a subject like a church gate, for example, and I focus on the left-hand gate pillar and make the shot, not noticing that the right-hand gate pillar is actually closer to me, albeit only by a foot. This now has to be part of the pre-shot assessment process, where before I simply used to rely on film DOF to take care of these minor indiscretions.
• Rather than simply focussing on my subject in the centre of the frame and then shooting, as I used to do, I now carefully scan the foreground, the corners, and every inch of the main subject for focus, before re-composing the shot and actuating the shutter. And if I move position at all, even by a foot or two, I force myself to re-focus again.
Now all of this must seem like perfectly obvious beginner stuff to you chaps, of course, but you know over the years I think I have just got sloppy. And shooting a lot of stuff for work with DSLRs where you don’t really even have to think about focus much doesn’t help, either. I’m finding out a lot I didn’t know before about these old Zeiss lenses, too, but that might be the subject for another post.
John
