Quote:
Originally Posted by dcstep
Yeah, that counts, but the bokeh is very light, such that you can make out the background. If you'd shot that image wide open, then the bokeh would be stronger. Also, if you'd used a longer focal length and shot wide open, then you'd have smoother bokeh that took the background out of recognition. As you have it, we see what's back there and it simply looks OOF. Where OOF ends and bokeh begins is kind of a judgement call. You could leave this in the contest (in my opinion) but you might want to work to throw the BG more strongly OOF so that it's harder to tell what's there.
You can see mine with the bird for an extreme example with a bird and totally smeared BG and the other examples in this thread and those that Rodi linked us to. Use your longest lens wide open and move in nearer to the minimum focus distance to maximize the effect.
Rodi and I "cheated". He used a tilt-shift lens to get a really advanced example that most of us can't duplicate because we don't have that type of lens lens. My case is much the same, because I used a $6000+ 500mm lens known to have some of the nicest bokeh on the planet. 
Still, you can do nice stuff with almost any telephoto lens or shorter lenses with wide apertures. This is one reason that many photogs use wide aperture lenses for their portrait work.
Here's a link to an image that's similar in concept to yours, taken with a 70-200mm f/4, but up close and wide open to maximize bokeh. I'm not posting the image here to avoid confusion with my offical entry:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcstep/...57623046971785
Dave |
Thanks so much for your help. I tried that with another setting and this is what I got.
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/2811/img0167aw.jpg