Fargo, North Dakota.

For this week’s photo challenge, I captured a couple of Christmas ornaments on our Christmas tree using my Samsung S6 cell phone, the only camera currently available while we are home for the holidays. I was experimenting with the camera’s selective focus mode. Since the ornaments were nestled among the tree branches, there was little depth of field to truly see the effect of selective focus.

For this week’s Cellpic Sunday, I captured a couple of images with a deeper background allowing for a greater perspective and the ability to show off the camera’s depth of field capacity. In the image above, focus was adjusted to the Stokes Train Station building in the foreground. As you can see, even the lighthouse that is only about 30 inches (77 cm) from the front corner of the building in the foreground, is clearly out of focus. If you click on the image above to enlarge it, you can clearly read the sign above the train station awning. When you turn on the camera’s Selective Focus mode, it asks you to touch the point on the screen that you want to be focused sharply. After touching the shutter button, the camera captures the image and then processes it. If it can’t determine an object you’ve selected, it warns you that the selective focus feature was not applied so you can try it again.

 In the image below, I touched the screen  at the point of the building in front of the lighthouse. As you can see, that building and the ones immediately adjacent are in focus. The Christmas tree and the train station are out of focus. If you enlarge this image, you’ll notice that the Train Station sign is fuzzy and all but unreadable. To view the photo challenge post that led me to experimenting with selective focus click here.

The rule for Cellpic Sunday is simple. The photo must be captured and edited using a mobile device.

For those interested in detail, I mostly use the Samsung S6 camera for taking the exposure and the image automatically uploads to my Flickr account. From there, I usually download the image to my iPad where I use Snapseed to edit and WatermarkIt-Pro to insert the logo. I have Snapseed on the S6, but I prefer working in the larger screen size of the iPad for editing.

John Steiner