Rediscovered Truths

Minolta A1
1/60
f3.5 above and f4.0 below respectively
ISO 200

I had read in my Dad's old photography book that there were three factors that help determine depth of field. Apeture, distance to the object in focus, and focal length. For some reason apeture and focal length made sense to me and I have thought about these factors when taking pictures. The distance to the object factor was somehow lost on me until today when I was reviewing these two photographs and noticed the difference in depth of field as seen in the extent of blurr in the black eyed susans in the background. I actually didn't notice the difference until I started working with both images in Photoshop Elements. The difference is accentuated the smaller the images are - (I noticed it first looking at the thumbnails.) I had paid attention to the distance to the object in focus in these two photographs when taking them, and the difference was about a third of a meter. Of note the apeture is bigger for the first photo which would act as a factor to reduce the depth of field. But, it appears that at least with the Minolta A1 one stop has less impact on depth of field than a third of a meter distance to object!

If I remember correctly one of the points made in Plato's Meno was that learning is really like remembering. Patrick Casement in his book Listening to the Patient, points out that psychoanalytic theory that is often first learned by reading, is only really understood well when it is re-discovered by chance, one might argue almost independently or at least with a certain amount of theoretical amnesia on the part of the therapist, and validated as true by both the therapist and the patient. This photographic lesson helped point out to me how important re-discovering something in practice has the most impact in learning.