The GetDPI Photography Forum

Great to see you here. Join our insightful photographic forum today and start tapping into a huge wealth of photographic knowledge. Completing our simple registration process will allow you to gain access to exclusive content, add your own topics and posts, share your work and connect with other members through your own private inbox! And don’t forget to say hi!

Sharp face despite camera shake?

Will

New member
This is another one from the V festival, this time at the end of the first evening. If you look closely at the man taking the photograph his face is sharply focused despite the fact that everything else is blurred from camera shake? All I can think of is that he must have coincidentally moved at exactly the same speed and amount as I moved the camera! And he is right in the center as well.

 
R

Ranger 9

Guest
I've seen this effect in a few of my own slow-shutter-speed photos. I assume the foreground trash is unsharp because of limited DOF, and most of the other people are moving around and swaying a bit, so they are motion-blurred. Meanwhile, this guy is trying to take a picture, so is making a concerted effort to hold still -- and consequently he comes out sharp in your picture. "Photographic symbiosis," would you call it?

(The walking guy in the cargo shorts on the right, the one looking down, also is pretty sharp in the upper body; that one may have just been luck.)

Anyway, it's an interesting effect: life in flux, with one person momentarily frozen by the act of photographing. It probably would be a cool theme for a group of pictures, if you could stalk enough camera users at dimly-lit events and figure out a way to produce the effect reliably.


(On my website I've got a collection of my own pictures on the theme of people using cameras and cell phones; I think some of them are amusing, but the sharp-and-blurred effect in yours really adds to it... it makes the photo a bit mysterious...)
 

Lili

New member
Will I love this image, the effect truly adds to it
Perhaps Fuji will create a version of face detect that stabilizes only the faces it locks on...
 

Don Ellis

Member
I love it, Will... very nice. Your eye is immediately drawn to him and I like the blurred rubbish littering the ground which leads up to the people. If I were cropping it for printing, I would probably cut out the near people on the left. You wouldn't lose much and it would keep all the people on a similar level (forgive my speculation).

Cheers,
Don
 

Will

New member
Nah... don't you see? He has a camera in his hand. It probably has IS :D
hehe, I like it!

Ranger you may well be right but looking at the image full size it appears that all the rubbish on the ground is blurred all the way back or it does to me anyway. Have a look on my flickr page and see what you think?


Lili I imagine that it actually would be technically possible to do that with in camera software some time in the not to distant future, may be an interesting option. Glad you like the image.

Don, thanks for you appreciation. I agree with your cropping suggestion, I was too fascinated by the weird focus effect to consider the framing all that much last night.
 

Will

New member
I'm off to Norway for a few days and may not have web access but I will leave you with the last (I promise!) three images from V 2009

Looking out from inside The Arena (big tent)


Looking into The Arena from inside, Lady GaGa playing. She was fantastic!


A classic english oak tree having an unusual day. The believe it or not is only the second stage.
Excuse the bad merging.
 

sizifo

New member
I like this photo a lot.

In my experience the effect of camera shake depends very much on how the shaking comes about. There can easily be an axis that remains immobile and therefore sharp, and I suspect the man in your photo is on this axis. It also explains why the mess on the floor is so blurred. Below is an exaggerated (it was a deliberate shot) example of what I mean - note the axis is nowhere near the center.
 
R

Ranger 9

Guest
Ranger you may well be right but looking at the image full size it appears that all the rubbish on the ground is blurred all the way back or it does to me anyway. Have a look on my flickr page and see what you think?
Yeah, it does look kind of like that, so I suppose the photographer's movement must have been a factor as well -- he and the subject (and the guy on the right) were in some kind of sync, so their movements cancelled each other's out.

This suggests a few potentially interesting experiments:

-- Experiment 1: Put the camera on a tripod. Have your subject go stand in the middle of a crowd of people. Tell the subject to hold as still as possible, while the other people mill around naturally. Shoot at a wide range of shutter speeds. See what happens.

[Hypothesis: As you go through the shutter speeds, your pictures should go through a range in which everybody is sharp...then only your subject is sharp...and then nobody is sharp. But you might also get some surprises, like the guy on the right in the original picture.]​

-- Experiment 2: Same setup as above, except hand-hold the camera. Tell the subject to move in a particular way and try to mirror his/her movements. (As suggested elsewhere, don't forget to try twisting movements as well as linear movements.) See what happens.

-- Experiment 3: Do the same as #2, but don't insert or direct a subject. Just pick out someone in the crowd and try to mirror his/her movements.

It could be a complete waste of time, but I'm thinking maybe some cool pictures might result. I'd try it myself, if I had any friends who would put up with this sort of thing!

[It's fun to find pictures of a crowd in which one person is different from the rest; here's one of mine:]

 

Will

New member
Sizifo I think you may have a point there. That would help explain the effect.
I like your image.
 
Top