Interesting DOF non-scientific test

[Maestrodawg1]

Well I just picked up a 50mm 1.4 lens earlier this week. As I was playing with it I ended up taking a few shots out of my car window pointed at the mirror. I shot a series at f stops, 1.4, 2.0, 2.8, 4, 8, and 16. I thought how the DOF and bokeh interacted were really interesting. I also noticed how sharp the background was at all f stops.

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[genehsu]

Looks like the lens was focused around infinity, so what you see is what you should expect. If, instead, you focused on the edge of the mirror, then you'd have a different blur series.

 

[Maestrodawg1]

Would it be? To be in focus wouldn't it need to be focused at the approximately 3 foot distance between the camera lens and mirror? I'll have to check next time.

 

[Tierdaen]

No, it is not focused on the mirror, it is focused on the object the mirror is reflecting, which appears to be quite a bit more than 1 meter.

Notice how out-of-focus the frame of the mirror is, and how much "clearer" it is at f/8. You're clearly not focused on the mirror itself.

 

[blw777]

To me it looks like you were focused on the BMW in the mirror. That's optically 30-40 feet away (two thirds of your car, plus a couple of car lengths behind you).