Selective Focus, Zoom Lens effect

Over the last few weeks Dave has given us some top tips on camera techniques in order to achieve certain results on the final images.  I wanted to practise these and show my understanding of the techniques and hopefully the images below will reflect this.

Selective Focus:

This technique is really simple, by choosing one part of the image to be sharp and in focus whilst the rest of the image is kept out of focus.  This can be done in different ways depending on the Camera you have, my Camera has a spot focus function but this can be quite time consuming as you have to go into the menu settings each time you wish to change the area you want in focus.  Other Camera's will allow you to do this whilst shooting and is a lot easier.

As I generally keep the spot focus set to the centre another way for me to do this (without changing settings) is to focus on the subject I want sharp and then move the camera so that the subject is framed accordingly.

Another option is to use the Manual Focus, I find this really helpfull when shotting close to the subject, the following 4 images have all been taken using the manual focus;

The focus here is on the "S" in the foreground      

again but focussing on the background

Focus on the face/knee area

again, focussing on the on the shoelace.

The following images were taken in automatic focus, keeping the spot focus setting in the centre of the frame.  Onced focussed on the subject I moved the camera to the right and upwards so that the area in focus would be at the bottom left;

The next 2 images were simply taken in auto focus with the spot focus setting in the centre of the frame;

Zoom Lens Effect

This effect is achieved by using a camera with a long exposure and a manual zoom lens.  For the image below I had set the shutter to 13 seconds and whilst the image was being taken I zoomed the lens in and out.

S 13 SecondsISO 100, F/16