Q3 Dining photography help/advice needed

[Qwertynm]

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Also keep in mind that when you‘re using f/16 with a 60Mp sensor your image will be less sharp due to diffraction. I‘d stack the images as suggested by jaap several posts above.
 

Your iPhone has a 4mm lens with a tiny sensor that gives the FoV of a 28mm and everything is sharp hence the computational out of focus rendering of portrait mode. 

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[Stuart Richardson]

Honestly, for this kind of work you are probably better off using your phone because of the tiny sensor and very short focal length lens. At close range with a full frame camera, it is not easy to get that much depth of field with a 28mm lens. If you want it to work better, you need to put the two things you want in focus closer to each other, but as you noted, this can feel awkward.

[My1stLeicaCam]

16 hours ago, dem331 said:

I chose that one because it is full frame like the Q3.

I do not think this tool takes into account the sensor MPs, I am not even sure I can answer the question “How does MP count affect DOF perception?”

My off-the-cuff answer is “Not much”, but I may be totally off the mark. I will leave that to more technically minded people. 

Hi dem331, I guess we will have a close estimation of dof w.r.t. distance from subject.
I can relate the theory better with the situation I have now.

 

[My1stLeicaCam]

Thanks @jaapv, @dem331 & @dpitt for the advices and enlightenment.

[My1stLeicaCam]

5 hours ago, Stuart Richardson said:

Honestly, for this kind of work you are probably better off using your phone because of the tiny sensor and very short focal length lens. At close range with a full frame camera, it is not easy to get that much depth of field with a 28mm lens. If you want it to work better, you need to put the two things you want in focus closer to each other, but as you noted, this can feel awkward.

Yap. The phone would be faster choice.

It’s kinda awkward yesterday when I can’t do it right with the Q3. 
Learnt so much after getting advices in the forum.

Guess I need to find an iPhone app that can do focus merge now as affinity photo only works on the iPad. 

[dpitt]

42 minutes ago, My1stLeicaCam said:

Guess I need to find an iPhone app that can do focus merge now as affinity photo only works on the iPad. 

I do not think you need any app. If you have an iPhone Pro, you can not only use the standard lens (1x) which is 6mm in reality, but it also has a 0.5x and a 2x option in the camera app. This will give you the option to switch to a 3mm(15mm eq.) or a 12mm (50mm eq.) lens.

For the largest DOF and ease of use at close distance the 0.5x ultra wide is the best option. Mind you, everything will be sharp, but it might introduce distortion you will not like. This is a physical law in the first place when using ultra wides, second the 'low quality' of the built in lens in the iPhone will be the limiting factor here. It will probably bend streigth lines and such and distort perspective.

You can not expect Apple to built in the quality of e.g. my Leica Elmarit 1:2.8/19 mm R lens which costed a fortune when new and is now highly sought after. I have seen some go as high as 5000€. It is designed for FF and is a nice example of an ultra wide that does not feel like a fish eye.

If you plan to shoot this kind of shots on a regular basis and want to get better quality overall, there are other options. Depending on what you like to spend this is what comes to my mind:

• An  MFT camera with e.g. a Voigtlander Heliar 15mm. MFT sensors have a crop factor 2x and the best camera's out there go up to 25MP and 100MP in multi shot mode. I have a Panasonic Lumix Gx8 that is great for macro and long tele shots. Both uses benefit from the 2x crop factor.
• Maybe use a FF camera with the same Voigtländer 15mm or even wider, but then you get more fisheye effect which is not always what you want. Going for smaller sensors feels like a better way.
• The Leica Digilux 2 is a wonderful small sensor fixed lens camera with crop factor 4x.
  It is only 5MP and was released in 2004 equiped with a wonderful Vario Summicron F2.0 28-90mm eq. zoom lens. There is a large fan club and for some it is their main camera, even today. In a sense it is the grandfather of your Q3. They come up for sale now from time to time (around 500€).
  Do not let the 5MP fool you. The results can beat many 10MP and 16MP camera that are much younger. In fact, with today's software the MP count is not an issue. You can blow it up to 60MP if needed wit current AI driven software.
  My main issue with it was that I had a really  hard time to get any meaningful shallow DOF Exactly what we want here.
  See for yourself in one of the longest threads on this forum:

[jaapv]

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4 hours ago, My1stLeicaCam said:

Yap. The phone would be faster choice.

It’s kinda awkward yesterday when I can’t do it right with the Q3. 
Learnt so much after getting advices in the forum.

Guess I need to find an iPhone app that can do focus merge now as affinity photo only works on the iPad. 

You do not need to merge photos on your iPhone. They are naturally sharp from front to back (as explained above). For the rest of the editing you can use Snapseed.

an iPhone Pro does not distort at 0,5

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Nor is there a physical law that links focal length to perspective distortion. That is caused by the distance to the subject, not by the lens. As people tend to use wider lenses at closer distances they think that the shorter lens causes the different perspective. Which not. 

[jaapv]

A Leica Digilux 2 was a fantastic camera in its time with a relatively large 1”  sensor. However it is totally unusable for the images the OP wants to take due to its miserable ISO performance compared to modern cameras.  Its AF is notoriously slow as well. A recent D-Lux will beat it by miles on all fronts. 

[dpitt]

On 11/25/2023 at 10:40 AM, My1stLeicaCam said:

The environment is brightly light afternoon tea. 

@jaapv You are right of course. The Digilux 2 must be considered a ISO 100 camera with JPG only because it s slow to write RAW files, and lots of other inconveniences. Though it handles low light situations rather well. I could go down to 1/6 sec wide open with burst (3) shots. The brightly lit situation would have been no problem IMO.

I found it funny that the OP wants a large DOF and my main issue with the Digilux 2 was just that.

The Q3 will no doubt be better at all the things the Digilux 2 struggles with and the results are miles ahead too. The images from a modern iPhone (Pro) and DLux are technically superior. But they still look flat to me compared to the best shots from a Digilux2.

Edited November 26, 2023 by dpitt

[adrianh]

The Q3 has a wonderful sharpness fall-off despite the relatively wide lens. What you would like to capture here however is so much easier to achieve with a new phone that it really makes no sense to pull out the Q3 for this kind of snapshot. The Iphone pic will just look better. Same goes for tricky high contrast  situations. The computational power of the new IPhones has gotten sensational in the last years. But, don't worry, there are enough remaining scenarios where the Q3 will be better. And more fun to use, anyway. You will eventually learn which device is better for which situation. 

Edited November 26, 2023 by adrianh

[Blackadder978]

For those that want to have an app that gives you an inkling of the depth of field for several lens options and a lot of other useful stuff: PhotoPills. I use if mainly for the location of the milky way and sun and moon trajectory, which it does very very well, but sometimes I use the DoF calculator as well.

 

[My1stLeicaCam]

@Blackadder978, I just bought the app photopill that got Q3 on it. 
 

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Edited November 27, 2023 by My1stLeicaCam

[dem331]

6 minutes ago, My1stLeicaCam said:

@Blackadder978, I just bought the app photopill that got Q3 on it. 
 

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I would be interested in seeing what the output is with the settings I posted, just to see how it is decreasing DOF for the additional MPs. 
 

Just curious, I know that it is not definitive. 

[My1stLeicaCam]

46 minutes ago, dem331 said:

I would be interested in seeing what the output is with the settings I posted, just to see how it is decreasing DOF for the additional MPs. 
 

Just curious, I know that it is not definitive. 

Hi, I tried inputting canon 1D, 28mm, f5.6 and subject 1.1m, as per your previous thread. 
So bigger sensor, the hyperfocal distance is maybe ~2.5x more, depth of field in front and behind is reduced by 2.5x. And u r right. Bigger sensor will have decreased of dof.

But if I choose same focal length, same aperture same subject distance, seems like dof for additional mp seems to be slightly more? But negligible difference?

 

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Edited November 27, 2023 by My1stLeicaCam

[Qwertynm]

Just keep in mind that Photo Pills makes assumptions about viewing print size, viewing distance and eyesight.

If you have 20/20 vision, print 24 inches and view the image from 25cm (less then 1 feet), total depth of field will be 6cm (at f/5.6 and 28mm).

If you print 7x5 with the same parameters as above DoF is 21cm.

If you shoot these for Insta then forget about using focus stacking or f/16. If you want to print these, then take the calculation into account would be my suggestion. 

[dem331]

42 minutes ago, My1stLeicaCam said:

Hi, I tried inputting canon 1D, 28mm, f5.6 and subject 1.1m, as per your previous thread. 
So bigger sensor, the hyperfocal distance is maybe ~2.5x more, depth of field in front and behind is reduced by 2.5x. And u r right. Bigger sensor will have decreased of dof.

But if I choose same focal length, same aperture same subject distance, seems like dof for additional mp seems to be slightly more? But negligible difference?

 

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Yes, indeed this is surprising. I don’t know enough to understand why. 

[jaapv]

Better just to know your camera and lenses’ behaviour I would say. Who is going to delve into an app whilst taking photographs? 

[dem331]

2 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Better just to know your camera and lenses’ behaviour I would say. Who is going to delve into an app whilst taking photographs? 

Absolutely.  But these calculators are useful to understand what is going on sometimes when you are sitting at home wondering how you screwed up a shot you thought you had nailed. 

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Hallo,

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