Why I Prefer My Lens Wide Open

And What I Learned From Comments On A Recent Post

iPhone Version of This Scene — Photo by Author

I published a story here two days ago titled . . . iPhone, Too Smart For Its Own Good.

I had gone out to get a quick coffee and did not take my camera. The sky clouded up and the light was beautiful. I saw several photos I wanted to make. I used my iPhone. It was the camera I had with me.

The image above is one of those photos.

In the story, I talked about the iPhone images having more depth of field than I prefer, even in the “Portrait” mode. Several of the comments on this story mentioned the differences noticed from my usual images.

This all got me thinking about why I photograph the way I do. Afterall I always use the tag line, “To wide open lenses . . . ”

I rarely stop the lens down from the largest aperture possible. I have come to prefer shallow depth of field. This has not always been the case. It also runs counter to how I learned photography, so many years ago.

Camera Version at f1.4 — Photo by Author

Today I revisited the scene where I made the iPhone image that opens this story. I wanted to photograph this same scene…