Re: realist portraits

[P3D Eric Goldstein <egoldste@xxxxxx>]

Dr. George A. Themelis wrote:

> Can you be a bit more specific?  

Why, yes... I can be extremely specific! 8-)

> How close do we have to be to throw the
> background dramatically out of focus with the 35 mm lenses of our stereo
> cameras in a *portrait*? 

I'll give you my MOs, and you can take it from there.

As you say, with 35 mm lenses and under typical circumstances, we're
talking large differentials here, which means exteriors.  I prefer
exteriors because I love early and late day light, and in fact the
winters here in Boston give you some beautiful portrait lighting for
several hours a day.

Depending upon the circumstances, I will often put several hundred feet
between my subject and the background. This is not particularly
difficult to do, and just about every park or historical sight with good
sized grounds has something to offer. I try to find a nice uniform
background of a color or color family which will flatter the subject. In
general, I try to avoid greens as a background color, because I find it
fatal to most flesh tones. Earth tones and blues can be quite nice,
depending upon the coloration of the subject and what they are wearing.
I often use low angle sunlight as backlight, filling with a soft
reflector if need be (strobe light is too blue in this circumstance) and
try to work some that same illumination into the background to help
harmonize the composition. I try to illuminate my subject about 2/3 to a
full stop above the illumination of the background they are immediately
behind, placing any sunsplash in the secondary areas of the frame.

Alternatively, at f3.5 the DOF of a 35 mm lens focused at 4 feet is
about 3.7 - 4.3 feet; 4.5 feet comes in at about 4.2 - 4.9 feet; 5 feet
is 4.6 - 5.5 feet, which means is you can find a nice uniform background
with a smallish and unobtrusive texture, such as a stone or brick wall
or painted wooden clapboarding, you don't need several hundred feet of
differential. In this case, 50 - 75 feet will accomplish the same thing.

I have also shot portraits with subjects leaning up against such
backgrounds, which can also work well with late day or early morning 3/4
light. Here, wide apertures give us good center sharpness while
softening the corners, which is effectively another use of "selective
focus."

> We just talked about how distorted such
> portraits are.  

As I mentioned in my previous post, not if you don't get too close. In
general, a medium cluse-up of head and shoulders is about as close as
you want to go, unless your subject has weak features and could benefit
from the perspective exaggeration (uncommon but not impossible). Be
careful with hands; if I include them they are usually at the same Z
plane as the face and not in front. 

> Since I am also interested in stereo projection, I'd
> rather use SLRs and longer lenses to achieve this effect.

Fine, if you've got the equipment and you want to shoot for projection.
I also find situational or environmental portraits to be very pleasing,
in which case you don't need to worry about selective focus for the
subject only. Also, MF offers some nice opportunity for classic
portraiture, with it's longer FL lenses and the more limited DOF.

I think the point I was trying to make originally is that there are
creative reasons to purposefully shoot at wide apertures with our stereo
cameras; it can be an artistic choice which works well in some
circumstances.

In an earlier post, you wrote:

> My 2.8 Realist is a fuzzball at 2.8 or even f4 and f5.6.

While some cameras will do better at large apertures than others, I
would be concerned about any camera which was poor at f/5.6. Remember
that these cameras were set to f/6.3 in full sunlight when they were
new. Most of the 50s stereo cameras I have worked with will give
adequate center sharpness wide open with falloff in the corners, which
is precisely what we want for portraiture. My beat up old first
production run Ilex Paragon Realist (and my Kodak as well) is quite fine
at f/3.5, with f/5.6 being almost indistinguishable from f/11 in many
circumstances.

>From the sound of it, your 2.8 could use a trip to Ron or Jess.


Eric G.


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