Recently, I posted a time lapse video of China's 60th anniversary celebration and lamented our own lack of discipline and coordination. It turns out the French don't want to be left behind either, and here is their aesthetically pleasing response.I don't know exactly how this video manages to make everything look like a miniature toy, and I may be way off base here, but the ultimate effect, at least as I see it, shows soldiers as obedient puppets and mindless automata lacking any personal sense of identity other than that accorded by their social group. So, on second thought, probably not what they were going for...
What's your take on it?
.
The effect is caused by the use of a very large aperture (small aperture number) that causes a for this scene unusual blur that we normally only associate with smaller objects or high distance disparity. At a distance above 3 meter normally all objects in a scene are sharp at the same time for the human eye. Just hold your fingers in front of your eyes and focus them, then concentrate your awareness on the background beyond without losing the focus on your fingers. You'll perceive a strong blur that is not the case for the perception of landscapes.
ReplyDeleteOops! Ok now that I have read the comments on that video...I should have known that you can hardly get such a selective focus on that distance with aperture settings only, they used Tilt-shift photography - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt-shift_photography
ReplyDeleteAnyways, you can do that with a f/1.2 lens on smaller distance. Or software reprocessing of course.
:-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt-shift_photography
Keywords: depth of field (dof) selective focus aperture tilt-shift
Thanks for the info, XiXiDu!
ReplyDelete