How to?

[bobiscuit]

I'd like to get a full-body shot of someone with a narrow DOF. There should be a fair bit of space around them in the frame and a blurry out of focus background.

My fastest lens is a 58mm f/2 which can do this with face and shoulders in the frame - but if I stand far away enough to get their whole body in, the background isn't blurry enough.

So what's needed for this kind of shot? A very fast wide-angle lens?

 

[rsloman]

Longer lens to compress the perspective, same aperture.

Or if it's possible, get them to stand a lot further away from the background.

 

[HoppyUK]

Short answer is an f/1.2 lens. A wide angle won't help as if you reframe the image so that the main subject fills the frame the same, depth of field will remain the same.

A longer lens might improve things because if you move back the narrower field of view means there's less backgound in the picture - less distracting, could do the trick.

Also, sensor format has quite a big effect on DoF - bigger sensor equals less DoF. But what camera are you using? That sounds like a very old lens, last seen on a Zenith film SLR, which is full frame in digital equivalent so already about as big as you can get.

To see how much DoF you get with different cameras, lenses, f/numbers and distances, try this on line calculator www.dofmaster.com

 

[bobiscuit]

You're right about the 58mm f/2 - it's a Helios lens originally from a Zenit. I use it with an M42 adapter on a 1.5 crop DSLR.

My budget won't stretch to a full-frame DSLR any time soon, but I never actually thought about using the Zenit! May be worth a try...

 

[Jaffster]

You could always cheat and add a 'Lens blur' filter in photoshop?

 

[DiddyDave]

Take them up a hill where the only background is sky - sorted

And I had that lens once too on my Zenit EM

DD

 

[HoppyUK]

You're right about the 58mm f/2 - it's a Helios lens originally from a Zenit. I use it with an M42 adapter on a 1.5 crop DSLR.

My budget won't stretch to a full-frame DSLR any time soon, but I never actually thought about using the Zenit! May be worth a try...

If all you want is less depth of field, by using the Zenith full frame film camera you will get less DoF, equal to 1.5x the f/number. So f/2 on full frame will give the same DoF as f/1.33 on the crop camera.

However, you will also be increasing field of view, increasing the amount of backgound visible, which might not help with subject isolation.

Can't you change the background, or increase the distance between the subject and background? Impossible to say without knowing more, but thinking about it if you can move as close as you dare, and get the background as far away as possible (as previously suggested) that will maximise DoF differential. Might be enough.