What are some psychological reasons why humans (or at least my observations of college-aged peers) prefer images with a bit of a blurred background? What is the balance between a photo being too blurred or not blurred enough?
AadithSrinivasan
Personally, I don't really prefer any of the 3 images shown but if I had to choose I would pick the first one just because the motion blur on the hand looks very off putting in contrast to the clear background. It would be interesting to see which images people prefer and why they prefer that particular image
tthvar
It's clear that the blurred background does put more focus on the central object of the picture - however, in this case we can see that the motion blur also creates "artifacts", such as the hand being missing in the 0.8 sec exposure image.
aramk-hub
I feel like it has to do with the motion blur being reduced. As we learned, it is difficult to minimize the motion blur as well as the blur of the background, as there are tradeoffs for choosing one. In this case, I prefer the blurred background because the photo puts emphasis on the subject of the image and also reduced the blur of the hand wave to keep the subject clear.
adityaramkumar
What does this have to do with the circle of confusion we learned before? Are the blurrings a requirement, or something people generally add with software?
ethanweber
Are there techniques to add lighting to the image such that f/32 with short exposure could prevent the motion blur but maintain the large depth of field?
seenumadhavan
@ethanweber increased motion blur is caused by a greater exposure time, so dropping the exposure time with f/32 will result in a dark image with little motion blur (since the aperture is small). If we want the image to be satisfactorily bright but keep the qualities of large depth of field and low motion blur, we should not touch the aperture size or exposure time. Instead, we can increase the ISO so pixels are more sensitive, brightening the image at the expense of more noise/graininess.
shreyaskompalli
When seeing this image, I often wondered how useful a high depth of field camera really is. Wouldn't it only produce high quality, good looking pictures when the subjects in the picture are moving very little? This seems like a somewhat unrealistic scenario since there is often motion in a scene, but perhaps the effects are more muted when the motion isn't as apparent as a hand wave.
Waterstar1
I really prefer a blurred background for some reason. This is also very popular in more "professional" photos. Does blurring the background put more focus on the actual object being taken a picture of. It's interesting to see how a technical challenge has now sort of added to the artistic and creative choices of photography.
What are some psychological reasons why humans (or at least my observations of college-aged peers) prefer images with a bit of a blurred background? What is the balance between a photo being too blurred or not blurred enough?
Personally, I don't really prefer any of the 3 images shown but if I had to choose I would pick the first one just because the motion blur on the hand looks very off putting in contrast to the clear background. It would be interesting to see which images people prefer and why they prefer that particular image
It's clear that the blurred background does put more focus on the central object of the picture - however, in this case we can see that the motion blur also creates "artifacts", such as the hand being missing in the 0.8 sec exposure image.
I feel like it has to do with the motion blur being reduced. As we learned, it is difficult to minimize the motion blur as well as the blur of the background, as there are tradeoffs for choosing one. In this case, I prefer the blurred background because the photo puts emphasis on the subject of the image and also reduced the blur of the hand wave to keep the subject clear.
What does this have to do with the circle of confusion we learned before? Are the blurrings a requirement, or something people generally add with software?
Are there techniques to add lighting to the image such that f/32 with short exposure could prevent the motion blur but maintain the large depth of field?
@ethanweber increased motion blur is caused by a greater exposure time, so dropping the exposure time with f/32 will result in a dark image with little motion blur (since the aperture is small). If we want the image to be satisfactorily bright but keep the qualities of large depth of field and low motion blur, we should not touch the aperture size or exposure time. Instead, we can increase the ISO so pixels are more sensitive, brightening the image at the expense of more noise/graininess.
When seeing this image, I often wondered how useful a high depth of field camera really is. Wouldn't it only produce high quality, good looking pictures when the subjects in the picture are moving very little? This seems like a somewhat unrealistic scenario since there is often motion in a scene, but perhaps the effects are more muted when the motion isn't as apparent as a hand wave.
I really prefer a blurred background for some reason. This is also very popular in more "professional" photos. Does blurring the background put more focus on the actual object being taken a picture of. It's interesting to see how a technical challenge has now sort of added to the artistic and creative choices of photography.