A Quick Photography Test

There is a way to sort of simulate shooting in medium format or even large format (those old large wooden cameras with a bellows on a big, heavy tripod with a cloth draped over the photographer's head) by shooting many images (side by side, high to low) with a wide aperture and then stitching the images together.  This provides a wide view compared to just a single image using the same lens but also will provide a very shallow depth of field.  I've never tried this before but the idea of this technique always intrigued me so I tried it this afternoon in our living room.

A shallow depth of field simply means that what is in focus in the photo is just a small slice of the whole scene...  what is in front of the slice of focus is blurry and what is behind the slice of focus is blurry...  the only thing in focus (hopefully) is the subject.  This type of shooting is most prevalent in portraiture or still life photography to eliminate distracting backgrounds and/or easily lead the eye to your main subject.  Large and medium format film portraits often had a very shallow depth of field and were long exposures.  

The larger the format, the more likely that the resulting image will have a characteristically shallow depth of field when shot with wide open large apertures.  The smaller the format (smaller sensors or smaller film format) it becomes increasingly difficult to attain a shallow depth of field.  Smaller sensors and smaller film formats will also lack the tonal qualities that are found in larger formats so there is a major drawback to small sensors and smaller film formats.

Of course, if you are shooting a landscape, in almost all cases, you strive for a deep depth of field...  everything in focus from front to back.  That being said, you will still want a high level of tonal qualities which is lacking in the smaller formats.  

Shooting a landscape as a panorama is sort of like simulating using a larger format.  Even if you shoot only three images, side-by-side, and then stitch them together, it is like using a wider sensor or film plane (ie, like Fujifilm's old panoramic film cameras).  The sensor only captures, for example, 6000 x 4000 pixels in a single image but when you stitch three images together that were shot side by side then the resulting image is like capturing an image on a sensor that is 12,000 x 4000 pixels (you need to have some overlap from image to image so I didn't simply triple the number of pixels for three side by side images).  

The same can be done for portraiture or still life photography.  In this scene, below, I shot nine photos (three across by three high) and I used a wide aperture which created a very shallow depth of field.  

While this is a very effective technique to attain a very shallow depth of field, it does require your subject to stay perfectly still for upwards of 15-60 seconds while you capture the multiple images.  In this respect, this technique is even more similar to shooting with an antique large format film camera because these cameras also used long exposures requiring a model to stay perfectly still for upwards of a minute.  

Here is another image captured the same way...  3 images side by side, 3 images high to low...

I have to admit, I may have gone a bit too shallow on the depth of field for these two images but it was interesting to get such a shallow depth of field for a fairly wide angle view.  This was just an exercise to see how this technique is done as well as to see the extreme.

For these two images, I was using a full frame sensor (one size down from medium format) and a long 135mm lens.  This long lens provides a very narrow view so stitching images together will make it appear more like a 55mm lens in this case (I'm guess from experience).  I also shot this lens with the aperture opened almost fully at f2.8.  A 135mm lens at f2.8 and close range (ie, about four feet away from me) creates a very shallow depth of field as is seen in the photos.  

In this case, I shot the nine photos in about 15 seconds so, if there was a model sitting there instead of a camera as my subject, then sitting perfectly still for 15 seconds isn't terribly difficult.  Sometimes, however, some photographers will shoot a series of upwards of 20 images which can require a full minute so 15 seconds isn't so bad.  

Another thing that could be done is to actually use an old medium format lens or large format lens.  These old lenses had a character that isn't as clinical nor as perfect as modern lenses.  I don't have any old medium format or large format lenses though.  I did use an old full frame manual lens from around 1980 though and this lens does have a bit of character.  

So, after I stitched the nine images together, I converted it to black and white, added some texture and even added some film grain which helps with the illusion of medium or large format film.

In hindsight, I really should have closed the aperture a bit more...  maybe to the f4-5.6 range.  Large format lenses were probably mostly in the f4 to f8 range at the wide aperture end so shooting at f4 probably would have resulted in a more accurate simulation of large format.  I think it would be an interesting project to try this technique with a live model though.