Friday, November 04, 2011

Further Investigation of AutoFocus up close

My previous investigation only wetted my appetite to find out more about the close up focusing on my android phone. So I reinstalled PRO Paint, something of a mistake (see the footnote) and also grabbed my Pentax DSLR and my wife’s FujiPix (a nifty little point and shoot) and I went out to take some things in the garden up really close. I was primarily interested in the difference in depth of field, as the lens got smaller. I was expecting the depth of field to get wider on the smaller cameras and largely it did. This narrower depth of field on my big DSLR does give a pleasant effect where the subject is in focus but the background blurred. Also these photos are clearer and possibly closer to the true colour saturation. I did use the special macro mode on The FujiPix and my touch and hold method for my HTC camera. What I did notice and I have seen before is that some subjects (eg purple & white flowers) give autofocus a hard time. I suspect these subjects don’t have sharp enough contrast in themselves for the autofocus to play with. See the single lavender bloom (second row) I was trying to focus on the petals of that bloom and only the DSLR let me do that (after a lot of ranking back and forth of the lens) the other cameras just focused on the foliage behind. 

CONCLUSION: You’ll still do better with marco subjects if you go for a DSLR and exploit the depth of field to highlight your subject,  All cameras did a good enough job to get the detail. Some white & lighter purple subjects are harder to get auto-focus to work.

Pentax D20

FujiPix Z30

Android HTC

Android PRO Paint

IMGP9350 DSCF3431 IMAG0403 Nov_3_2011_2152
IMGP9342 DSCF3422 IMAG0392 Nov_3_2011_4917
IMGP9345 DSCF3426 IMAG0398

Not Taken *

IMGP9347 DSCF3428 IMAG0401

Not  Taken *

IMGP9341 DSCF3421 IMAG0394

Not Taken *

IMGP9348 DSCF3429 IMAG0402 Nov_3_2011_1379

* The PRO Paint app kept crashing my phone, whenever it used the flash which it did unnecessarily, so I gave up and uninstalled it again.

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