Proximity Puzzle (Page 2): I don't know if I answered your question. You are not really seeing around your foreground subject, you are seeing more concentrated pixels of the car plate...

gdwsr Loc: Northern California

I don't know if I answered your question. You are not really seeing around your foreground subject, you are seeing more concentrated pixels of the car plate THROUGH the dispersed pixels of the branch. It is like taking a picture in a newspaper (dots of ink with white space between) and coloring some of the white space with a few dots of a different color. That's not exactly right but you get the idea.

Morning Star wrote:

Makes perfect sense! Hadn't thought about it till ... (show quote)

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

gdwsr wrote:

Actually, in that situation, wouldn't it make sense if you could occupy the entire image with the very dispersed (blurred) image of one wire on the fence. The whole image would have a muted look that could be more easily dealt with in post -- especially if your subject was dark and the wire bokeh was light?

One wire just may not be possible. In order to get the entire animal in your photo you'll probably get a good chunk of the chain link as well. The thing here is, that you're focused on the animal ('s eyes :wink: ), the chain link is totally out of focus.
You'd need to adjust aperture for blurred close-up and sharp farther away - depth of field would be important here.

Hmm, no chain link or chicken wire in my back yard. I'll see this afternoon if I can get the same thing with the bars of the sundeck railing....

Searcher Loc: Kent, England

gdwsr wrote:

I don't know if I answered your question. You are not really seeing around your foreground subject, you are seeing more concentrated pixels of the car plate THROUGH the dispersed pixels of the branch. It is like taking a picture in a newspaper (dots of ink with white space between) and coloring some of the white space with a few dots of a different color. That's not exactly right but you get the idea.

I'm getting there and now I know my camera hasn't turned into an X-Ray machine.

If the science does not bog me down too much, I'll spend a few hours on the subject.

Thanks for you perceptive input.

gdwsr Loc: Northern California

Just fooling around, I zoomed in on the RAW file of the Christmas lights. I think it demonstrates the "see through" effect of dispersion of pixels I was talking about. If you think of the black pixels as unoccupied background then you can see how the red light's and yellow light's pixels are dispersed. If they were in sharp focus you would see no black, just the concentrated pixels from the lights.

Searcher wrote:

I'm getting there and now I know my camera hasn't turned into an X-Ray machine.

If the science does not bog me down too much, I'll spend a few hours on the subject.

Thanks for you perceptive input.

Bokeh Zoom

(Download)

gdwsr Loc: Northern California

Morning Star, I was sort of talking hypothetical. I don't know what would actually happen if one could get just one wire. I think I would try to get just one opening with a diamond of wire vignette that I could adjust in post. Now you have me curious -- and I do have a chainlink fence in back, hmmm...

Morning Star wrote:

One wire just may not be possible. In order to get... (show quote)

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

gdwsr wrote:

Morning Star, I was sort of talking hypothetical. I don't know what would actually happen if one could get just one wire. I think I would try to get just one opening with a diamond of wire vignette that I could adjust in post. Now you have me curious -- and I do have a chain link fence in back, hmmm...

Here's the how-to:
http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-shoot-through-a-wire-fence/
The emphasis is: distance camera to fence - as close as you can get. Distance fence to object: much greater.

DigitalDon Loc: Calgary, Alberta

Looks like double exposure to me.

Searcher Loc: Kent, England

DigitalDon wrote:

Looks like double exposure to me.

Double exposure was my knee-jerk reaction, but the number plate and other parts of the car are in focus and clear. Double exposure would have left a few artefacts lying around.

Yooper 2 Loc: Ironwood, MI

The right edge of the licence plate does appear to be in front of the bush while the rest of the bush appears to be closer to you. It's not a reflection because the branch continues. A reflection would be curved to follow the car body. I have no explanation but it is an interesting photo.

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

Yooper 2 wrote:

The right edge of the licence plate does appear to be in front of the bush while the rest of the bush appears to be closer to you. It's not a reflection because the branch continues. A reflection would be curved to follow the car body. I have no explanation but it is an interesting photo.

i gave up on a reflection when the op said the bush and car are separated by 25 feet.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Searcher wrote:

Using a 300mm lens I focussed on the BMW number plate.

The car was approximately 300 feet from the camera, but the bush which appears to be behind the number plate and the car lamps was at least 10 feet nearer to me.

Can anyone offer an explanation as to why the bush appears behind the plate and the lamps appear in front of the bush?
1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400

Besides the fact that you have some color fringing going on, which does blur any contrast between objects of different distances, the focal length related areas that are out of focus will almost appear transparent (a normal phenomenon), that will make it sometimes difficult to judge wich object/objects are in front or behind others. I think this is a normal occurrence and nothing to worry about.

Searcher Loc: Kent, England

speters wrote:

Besides the fact that you have some color fringing going on, which does blur any contrast between objects of different distances, the focal length related areas that are out of focus will almost appear transparent (a normal phenomenon), that will make it sometimes difficult to judge wich object/objects are in front or behind others. I think this is a normal occurrence and nothing to worry about.

This particular lens does suffer from CA particularly when the light is in front of the lens. A few minutes in PP and that gets cleared. I did not put this one through the mill, because I only wanted the car registration number, and once I saw the "illusion" did not want to cloud any issues.

What is annoying is that I cannot replicate the phenomena; the only difference today is the nature of the light. Yesterday bright sun and today a little overcast, used same ISO and aperture with a slower shutter speed and the result was an in focus number plate which was behind the out of focus shrub - as it should be. The car lamps no longer have branches growing from behind them.

It isn't something that worries me, but it does bother me that I can't figure it out.

Maybe your explanation is the correct one, but why could I not replicate the DoF transparency? Is it a combination of the ideas propagated earlier in the thread?

The two theories I have discounted are Reflection and Double Exposure.

Thanks for your input, it is added to the list of possibilities and is now part of my "Circle of Confusion".

OonlyBonly

Morning Star wrote:

No! Searcher says the shrub is 10 feet nearer the ... (show quote)

usken65

It is because the plate was the focus point. It is in focus but the shrub is translucent so it let's the plate stand out a little bolder than it is.

philkaos Loc: Barstow, CA

A short and simple explanation that really has to do more with anatomy.

The camera is trained/programmed to work like the human eye. After all we (humans) developed the technology. The only way to really capture an image is to commit it to memory like you brain would.

Here is a helpful link that can explain images, focusing, and lighting. http://www.livescience.com/3919-human-eye-works.html