Re: To Box or Not?

["Paul A. Lehman" <palehman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Good points Eric, but you brought up some more questions if I
may,

Eric Goldstein wrote:
> The significant drawback for me would be that the difference between an
> object in hyperfocus and an object in pin sharp focus is quite obvious
> in some circumstances, and without the ability to change focus this can
> create difficulties in some shooting contexts.

Now I'm a wee bit confused. I thought that within a correct (and
conservative) depth-of-field range, all items are in focus. Is it
actually that there is a gradient of focus within the DOF range?
 
> Lets say you wanted to make a nice situational portrait of your squeeze
> in an outdoor setting. Using your camera, you'd place her at 8-10 feet
> and compose the rest of the background behind her. But when you get the
> chrome back, you may very well clearly see that the huge tree 30 feet
> from the camera and 20 feet behind her is in visibly sharper focus than
> she is, yet she is supposed to be the most prominent element in the
> visual hierarchy. This makes for a very uncomfortable composition.

I can understand this if she is right at the DOF edge, but if she
were a bit further in, say at 12 ft, then shouldn't she be in
good focus? The alternative would be to use adjustable focus to
make her "pin-sharp", but then you risk putting the background
out of focus (or softer). Isn't this last option against one of
the cardinal rules?

> I also think there are plenty of shooting situations where you'd want to
> focus from 5 to 40 feet than 9 ft -> inf, such as in shooting almost any
> interior.

Here enters the question of window placement. I have been
assuming that the MF window typically shouldn't be closer than
about 7-8 ft for proper viewing consideratins. What is the
closest object allowable distance for normal MF with normal lens
seperation?

Tom Deerings post also eludes to this particular issue. If the
camera is designed for window placement knowing most shots will
be 5 to say 50 feet, hyperfocal considerations are lessened (I
would think). But if for a more "universal" camera, how
frequently would there be objects closer then 8-10 ft in a proper
stereo picture?

Thanks
Paul A. Lehman