I just posted a new gallery, “What the Street Says”. It was an experiment with vignetting. As I looked a the photographs of others, I had noticed more and more photos I really liked which used vignetting, so I wanted to try it out a little myself.
Vignetting (pronounced ‘vin-yet’) is basically a fall off of light on the edges of the photo. Some folks use it to add an antique look to the photo. Some say it draws the eye of the viewer to the center, a tool to highlight your subject. And some just think it is cool. I guess I best fit into the last category, because I do not have a reason, per se, to use vignetting. I just like the way it looks. It adds another dimension to the photos.
I guess, you could just use graphical editing software to produce a vignetting effect (easily seen on the corners of this photo), but that takes all the fun out of it. And using software adds a lot of processing time for something which is easily created in camera.
I recently bought a handy dandy little filter holder to screw on the end of my lens. Instead of actually buying any filters for it, though, I instead cut a hole out of a cheap piece of stiff, black paper and slid that in the filter slot. I can use circles, ovals, or any shape that I so choose, but this one is just a simple circle.
I was quite surprised how small I had to make the circle cut out before I noticed significant vignetting on the photo. Then, I realized that the viewing angle of my lens was actually cropped by my sensor size (as with the majority of digital cameras out there, SLR and compact alike).
See, the lens was made for 35mm film size and my digital sensor size is smaller than that. So, if a particular lens on a 35mm film camera took a photo of a piece of paper that filled the photo exactly, that same lens on my digital SLR would not capture the outer inch or two of the piece of paper.
So, back to my vignetting issue, the sensor could see my vignette. Easy fix, though. Just make the circle smaller. That I did, until the vignette showed how I wanted.
