Does anyone have a firm grasp on the relationship between focal length, aperture, subject distance, subject size & depth of field

Basically I'm looking to do a full body portrait of a couple & whilst obviously they need to be in full focus, I'd like to blitz the background as much as possible.

I'm shooting full frame. I have fast 20, 28, 50 & 85mm lenses plus I also have a 150mm f2.8. - I understand each will have its own effect on perspective, but which will isolate the subjects the most ?

What have you got to lose ? If you're going to be stitching, you'll want to use manual exposure anyway. So pick up an M series lens as cheap as chips, the f1.7 or f2 should cost you pocket money.

If you are nervous about scratching the actual screen, then wrap some sticky plaster around the tweezer points.

Congratulations Aiki, it looks as if the ladies are keeping the trophy to themselves lads

Nikon introduced an Ai (auto indexing) mount in the late 70's where a small lever on the camera body reads the physical position of the aperture ring - No electrical contacts needed on the lens, just a small notch to engage the lever. Couple this with a aperture lever that spring defaults to wide open & it's easy for manufacturers to make manual focus lenses. It's a shame that Nikon in their wisdom, decide to only fit the camera lever for Ai to their higher end bodies. Indeed their low end bodies don't even have a screw af motor built in. So you don't get backward compatibility by default with Nikon as you do with Pentax. But as they hold a large market share, 3rd party manufacturers are catching on & updating all their lenses to have built in motors. Even Zeiss are updating their range of mf lenses to include aperture contacts to give functionality to the lower end bodies.

I think with Pentax you can grow into legacy lenses as you learn, with Nikon, once you've learnt, you may realise you need to fork out more for a higher end body if legacy lenses are a route you'd like to take.

I'm not sure which Nikon body they were using Ken, or if indeed they did use a Nikon version. But with my D700 the Samyang gives full matrix metering & permits AV mode. You have to use the aperture ring rather than the control dial, but it does auto stop down. I think it may not meter on D90 and below though.

Here's an uncropped shot at 118mm (Sigma 70-200) of a smaller bird.




I wonder how close we can go ? Anyone have a fisheye shot of a wren perhaps ?

The 8mm is a 180MM degree fisheye for aps-c. I'm guessing you'd end up with a circular image on film.

I actually prefer the last one as the in focus part seems to have more pop. I'd agree with John about the background though, I'm not sure if your editing package facilitates it, but you could try (very) slightly desaturating & darkening the yellow channel which would then let the subject stand on its own merit.

I normally appreciate a lovely creamy background, but I think the background in #2 is delightful, full of colour, enough detail to suggest foliage but without being busy. This will have been due to the longer focus distance giving slightly more depth of field. I would have been interested to see the 1st shot at f4 or f5.6 to see if it resulted in an equally delightful backround.

Nope, they need to make more money... there was a rumour of them developing a 35mm f1.4 & if it's another copied classic design with a low pricetag then I'd go for it

I was waiting for the 14mm to be released, but the minimum focus distance was a little too long for me as it turned out.

I also think they'd do well to develop a macro where manual focus would be more widely accepted.