Beguiled Reptile

These images are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

I recently said on Discord that I think "reptile people can be hot." Of course, not to everyone, and it depends on how they are depicted. I decided to show what I think is hot.

I usually don't use DOF (depth of field) when rendering, but since I was tinkering around, I made a version with DOF. It's very subtle; I used f/44 which is more subtle than most cameras are capable of. The good news is that the extra time it took was negligible. Non-DOF version took 34 minutes 23.83 seconds, and the DOF version took 34 minutes 49.81 seconds.

But concerns about longer render times is not the primary reason that I do most of my renders without DOF. For those who are interested in the topic, read on.

I do not hold with the idea that DOF makes a picture more realistic. If we mean realism as in, looking like a real photograph, then yes, DOF adds realism. If we mean realism as in, what it's like to actually be there, then no, DOF actually makes for less realism. That's because when you are actually at a scene in the real world, though your eyes can only focus on one depth at a time, they are able to refocus on any object almost instantaneously. A picture with DOF robs us of the ability to focus on what we want to focus on. That's not realistic.

But DOF does have its place. Artistically, it helps us to pull focus to the subject of our picture. Realism is not the goal here. The goal is to communicate to the viewer what should be considered important in the scene.

It can also be used in 3D rendering when the props we are using in the background are not of the highest quality, and are actually improved by introducing a bit of focus blur. In the example here, the scenery might get some benefit from this, but since it's the same quality as the scenery in the foreground, we haven't gained much.

The example also has a very clear subject that we want to draw focus to, however, the composition of the picture makes that clear, so DOF really isn't needed here. That's usually where I find myself; no need, no benefit, no bother.