Shallow Depth Of Field for Iphone Photos Tecniques and Tips

L

lazaro

Guest
Hello All:

Don't know if I'm posting this in the right forum, but I'll go for it anyway. So my question is about "shallow depth of field" effects. Knowing that the iphone has a small sensor, and dslr/longer lens type depth of field shots are extremely hard to execute with any degree of naturalism or accuracy, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions about how best to pull off this effect, either while shooting or in processing. I've tried all sorts of tilt shifts, hdrs and other effects. I've tried hipstamatic's loftus lens (which I like to a point) and the app tadaa's center focus tools (which I also like to a point,) but it's very rare that I either achieve or see iphone photos that look to have a completely natural shallow depth of field that one would find in shooting with a longer lens that can really isolate the subject. Most photo effects with mobile that try to achieve this look very "manufactured" to me. It's one of the last drawbacks to shooting exclusively with mobile.

So my question to you all is, anyone have any suggestions? Is it even possible to achieve this look with any sort of naturalism? Is there a great app, work flow or technique that I've missed?

I've been wanting to brainstorm/problem solve this question for a couple years now, and now that I've found you all I'd really love to plug into your collective talent, technique and brain power to come up with a solve, or at least explore if the technology even makes it possible right now. If I was a developer I would be looking to create this app (unless I've missed a great one that's already out there.)

Thanks ahead of time, and I look forward to any discussion and ideas that follow.

Best,
L
 
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Depth of field is controlled by three things ... aperture, focal length and distance to the focus point. The aperture and focal length on these devices is generally fixed, so the only variable you have is the distance from the subject - the closer the object being focused on, the shallow the DOF and the more blur.

So a software solution is pretty much the only practical answer, unless you're subject is always remarkably close. Any software that will let you paint localized effects would be good to recreate the blurred out of focus areas. That works best if you adjust the intensity of the blur you're painting onto the image according to how far behind the focus point an object is.

It also helps if you reduce contrast and saturation in those areas that are supposedly out of focus and conversely increase the sharpness, contrast and saturation of the in-focus stuff. Adding those moves to selectively painting gaussian blur works well.

When shooting it helps if you ensure that are a number of things/areas of the picture that are at different distances behind the focus point, to reinforce that the subject is in the foreground.

Thats my 2 cents worth :)

p.s. I kept saying the out of focus area was behind the focus point. Of course it can be in front too, I just used behind as a shorthand.

Darren.
 
Thanks, Darren. Do you have any app suggestions to achieve some of these effects? I use snapseed occasionally, which allows you to pick and choose selectively the brightness, contrast and saturation (though not as accurately as I'd like,) but are there better ones? I looked at this one app: afterIt, but it has no reviews and no developer information.

And the writing was great. :)
 
You can achieve a shallow depth of field with an iPhone if you know how to work around the limits. The key is to lock the iPhone's focus on something in your field of view that's between 1 foot and 18 inches away from the lens. Everything past that will be in soft focus. It also works in reverse. Here are a couple of examples. No tiltshift or other bokeh effects were added. This is exactly how they were shot in camera (minus some cropping and color correction).

All photos taken on during a recent iPhoneography workshop with Jack Hollingsworth.
beach.JPG

highlandlight.jpg
higginsfarm.jpg
 
Yes, this seems to be an interesting and effective technique, especially for landscape and still life shots such as these, but how about for people? And not just portraits, but candids? Does this technique work in situations where you're really having to respond to the environment and moment within a moment? The focus is very hard to maintain using this technique in those spontaneous situations, at least for me, and everything gets messy.
 
lazaro said:
Yes, this seems to be an interesting and effective technique, especially for landscape and still life shots such as these, but how about for people? And not just portraits, but candids? Does this technique work in situations where you're really having to respond to the environment and moment within a moment? The focus is very hard to maintain using this technique in those spontaneous situations, at least for me, and everything gets messy.
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No, it's not going to work for street photography or spontaneous situation. And with portraiture, you don't want to get too close to your subject otherwise the wide angle nature of the iPhone lens will distort their features. A 2x telephoto lens will help alleviate that, giving you an effective 60 mm lens (iPhone 5 lens is a 30 mm equivalent). I expirment with different focusing points, different angles, and compositions. If you use Hipstamatic, the D-plate film and Tinto 1884 lens provide a nice soft depth of field that works great with portraiture.
 
Great pics Chris !

They show just how close your point of focus needs to be to get a limited depth of field. If you have the time you could take two shots, one focused on something very close and then an actual picture of your subject (presumably further away from the camera). You could then composite the two shots together with ps touch or blender. Placing your in focus subject into your out of focus background. Tricky getting this to work well if you shooting hand held and maybe not so good for your street shooting. Unless you're shooting from a fixed spot.

For those localized adjustments photoshop touch or iColorama would be my choice, but I bet some of the folks here have better app recommendations..

D.
 
Yes, I like the loftus lens, it's sort of a more relaxed version of the Tinto. I find the Tinto often bloodshot/reddens eyes in color and zombifies them in black and white, so I stay away from it. Loftus isn't as intense, but I still feel like I'm hoping for happy accidents with it rather than using a technique.

But thank you for the tips and I think you've more clearly elucidated what I'm looking for: the ability to shoot shallow depth of field with my iphone but in spontaneous situations. To do this with a consistent technique and not by happy accident. To either do it while shooting or find a work flow that allows me to create it consistently in post.
 
I wonder if other techniques that de-emphasize the background are better to explore ? I know that's the worst answer :) for example panning with a moving subject, that smears everything else quite nicely if the light is conducive to slow shutter speeds.

What other techniques are like that ?
 
It might be worth a try, but conceptually, when I think about it, I can't imagine this technique working because the lens, on a slow shutter setting, can't separate the object you're focusing on from the background. So my assumption is that moving the camera on a slow shutter setting would smudge everything in the frame? It would look similar to, say, a 645pro photo on night shooting setting when you haven't mounted the camera to a tripod: smeared light.
 
Oh, and I've tried some different companies' telephoto lens sets, the best I actually found was a small company from China called USBfever, which no one in the states really talks about (find them on Amazon.) I got the crispest images with least amount of loss of quality with their lenses, but I found the case you attach these with to be clumsy and fragile, and there was still far too much unintentional vignetting and curving at the edges (the problem with almost all attachable iphone lenses, no matter what they claim.) While fun stuff, again, it started to fall into the happy accident category instead of actually using a skill set, which is fine for a game, but not to be taken seriously in pro situations.
 
Lazaro -

Looked into this a little bit myself, and the unavoidable optical elephant in the living room is that the hyperfocal distance of my 4S is 6.33 feet. You get a tiny bit of bokeh from maybe 42" on down to minimum focus distance, but that's about it.

So you're plain and simply out of luck, optically speaking.

Here's a pretty interesting evaluation of same:

shadynut.tumblr.com/post/11050394781

R'gds,

John
 
Thanks, John. Yes, sounds like a precarious situation, or if not precarious, than an opportunity. He who cracks the iphone depth of field problem in an app is going to do very well for himself. There certainly is a need. I'm still hoping someone will chime in here who either has a way of creating depth of field or an app that so far has not been mentioned.
 
lazaro said:
Thanks, John. Yes, sounds like a precarious situation, or if not precarious, than an opportunity. He who cracks the iphone depth of field problem in an app is going to do very well for himself. There certainly is a need. I'm still hoping someone will chime in here who either has a way of creating depth of field or an app that so far has not been mentioned.
Click to expand...
Something you could try would be to take a test shot like one of my exams above where you get the force focus you want. Then leave your focus locked and go around shooting as you normally would. Since the focus would be locked, you could trick the iPhone into giving you the depth of field you're looking for in the more spontaneous shots. The DOF may be tok shallow, but it would hurt to try. I may experiment with that myself.

My favorite apps are BlurFx and Image Blender for adding bokeh in post process.
 
DC,

That's a great idea. I've sort of toyed around with it, but I'm going to give it a try, see what happens. I imagine it will take a bit of toying to find an appropriate distance to lock on depending on the situation.
 
So the lens is the camera? Does it make a difference if it's a true mobile accessory or not, as long as it expands the possibilities of the phone's image capture ability in a portable way? I like that they're at least thinking outside the box to get around sensor limitation issues.
 
dcmacnut said:
Not a true mobile photography accessory, since the lens is also the camera. The images aren't take with the smartphone. The phone merely controls the lens/camera kit.
Click to expand...

I wonder how many users would make that distinction ? ;-)

It seems almost comical to simply strap a small ('ish) compact camera onto a phone like that.
 
Seems like a dumb idea to me. Might as well mount it to a chunk of wood. But then maybe it's just me.

I won't be buying one unless it, at least, improves the performance on the native phone camera.
 
@Muzz, goes without saying. I'd prefer an app that achieves the same s.d.o.f. effect in camera, but apparently it either hasn't or can't be developed...?
 
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