DOF!
the problem with a real world simulator is that in order for things to look real they need to be the same scale as the real world. Camera lenses behave differently regarding Depth of Field depending on how far things are from the camera film plane.
I would be willing to estimate that your chairs are about 6 inches tall, and that the distance to the camera would be a couple feet at most.
You need to ensure the scale correct and that the camera is at least 10 feet from the chairs/tables. If you were to take a real picture with an film SLR/50mm (close the the field of view of your eye) you would find yourself 10-16 feet away to frame it the way you have. At that distance it's almost a physical impossibility to get that dramatic narrow area of focus with such a smooth transistion to out-of-focus. You MAY loose SOME focus at 30ft+ and you would have focus up to about 4 feet from the camera.
Another point is that as you get further away from the camera, say 9 feet the DOF 'appears' to shift from focus to non-focus much more abruptly. When the objects are only a few feet from the camera we get to see gradual change from focus to out of focus... when something is 12 feet away, that shift is much harder to see, so in fact you would have one chair in focus, and the nearer chair would be half in focus, half not. the gradual change we see tells us the object is very close to the camera.
check out this link, it outlines the basics of DOF, ALSO includes a very handy DOF calculator which can be used to estimate if your level of DOF is realistic for the scene's intended scale and your desired distance from your point of focus.
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutori ... -field.htm
- By Mark Bell
- By Mike Amos 20251018183343
- By Blanchett