SLR Camera

[glorybound]

I justgotback from vacation, and while I wasvacationing, I played with my SLR camera. I have had this camera for years, but I justleft it on automatic. I had a blast and have a newhobby. I havebeenreading about photography and composition for years, but this is the firsttime I used the camera out of automode. The purpose of the post is how my cheapcamerahandles DOF. it was real-time and awesome. Why doesn't the V-Ray Camerashow DOF in real-time?

[Alan Iglesias]

Blurry bokeh effects in a photographic image, or what happens when there is a very shallow depth of field, are manifestations of the physical properties of light and the the lens, the size of the lens aperture and size and placement of the film or electronic sensor (focal plane).

Simply put, light reacts differently when seen through different sized and shaped glass, openings and focus planes, creating different levels of blurriness when focusing on a single point.

This happens naturally and therefore in real time. Vray uses mathematical equations to simulate what nature is doing. It's complex, and it takes time to compute and render these results, especially if many samples are taken to get a pleasing image.

More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh

It might be noted here that some photographers (Ansel Adams comes to mind) went way out of their way to create images with vastly deep depth of field with virtually everything in focus. Large focal planes and relatively very small apertures enabled him to do this. Just another point of view and way of doing things...

I would also mention that it is really fun to use RT-GPU to instantly see bokeh effects react while changing Vray physical camera settings, so perhaps waiting long amounts of time for these effects will someday be a thing of the past.

If I missed anything here, perhaps someone else will chime in...

Enjoy your new hobby!

-Alan

[joconnell]

Get yourself one of the cheap 50mm lenses for the nikon or canon that go to f1.8 - Extremely fast and shallow focus lenses so they're beautiful for portraits. Also means on nights out you can take photographs using the ambient light without a flash, which can make people look a bit trashy. It'd be worth starting to take photos of maybe a few buildings made with different materials or architectural styles. Maybe pick 3 very different types that are near you, and take photos of them at different times of the day and in different lighting conditions so you get a good sense of what your building / sky exposure should be and how the different types of light affect the stone, tiles, wood and glass. It'll give you something to draw from for your renders!

[glorybound]

Get yourself one of the cheap 50mm lenses for the nikon or canon that go to f1.8 - Extremely fast and shallow focus lenses so they're beautiful for portraits. Also means on nights out you can take photographs using the ambient light without a flash, which can make people look a bit trashy. It'd be worth starting to take photos of maybe a few buildings made with different materials or architectural styles. Maybe pick 3 very different types that are near you, and take photos of them at different times of the day and in different lighting conditions so you get a good sense of what your building / sky exposure should be and how the different types of light affect the stone, tiles, wood and glass. It'll give you something to draw from for your renders!

I'll see what tyoe of lens I can get for my camera, or even better, get myself a nicer one with a good lens.

[joconnell]

The camera body is more than likely capable of most things from a canon 350d upwards - It's ALL about the lenses you use save for some low light situations unless you're a pro shooter and need extremely large or grain free images. The f1.8 is a very fast and very shallow lens so it'll give you a good idea of how much depth of field your images should have in them if you were focussed on something very close or very far away - they're cheap too, about $100 for the canon model and a bit more for the nikon. Even with your current lenses what's more important is looking at exposure. For example if you've got a sunset and you take a photo of a building, if the building is properly exposed so there's plenty of detail, is the sky totally blown out around it? Likewise if you shoot inside at the correct brightness, how bright is the scene outside the windows?

[andybot_cg]

the 50mm is going to be a rather narrow Field of View on your DSLR (75mm+ equivalent on the cropped sensor) so it may be worth looking at a fast 30mm or 35mm lens for a bit more compositional versatility in a fixed lens format.