Elevated points of view tell a story. Whether you are shooting landscapes, cityscapes, or a stage performance, shooting from a commanding position gives an overview of what you want to communicate. In this case, I captured the Balinese kecak fire dance from a seat high up in the audience with a 100-400mm lens. The telephoto allowed me to eliminate extraneous elements as well as create an establishing shot that included most of the performers. At the same time, I was able to give a total sense of what was happening on stage. Had I been shooting from floor level or from one of the seats in front, I'd have a depth of field issue plus the performers in the background would be obscured. My settings for this were 1/250, f/6.3, 2000 ISO, and I took this with the new Canon 100-400mm lens.
4 Comments
Jul 24, 2016, 9:03:47 PM
Jim - Hi Bob, Depth of field is a function of four things: (1) Lens aperture, (2) focal length of the lens, (3) camera - subject distance, and (4) subject-to-background distance. With a telephoto, if the camera - subject distance is far enough, everything will be sharp at any lens aperture.
Jul 24, 2016, 4:22:48 PM
Bob Vestal - You are using Canon's new 100-400mm lens quite a bit and getting excellent results. It looks like you have good depth of field even at f/6.3 and more than I would expect. DOF often is a challenge with longer focal lengths, especially with wide apertures. Can you comment?
Jul 24, 2016, 5:34:18 AM
Jim - Thanks very much, Gary.
Jul 24, 2016, 12:59:06 AM
Gary Goelitz - Gorgeous picture.