Now the story behind this one is slightly unusual. This was not a planned shot; it was something I did literally on the spur of the moment. I had ridden the tram down to Haymarket (the outskirts of Chinatown) for some experimentation with the 40-150 and the circular polariser. The first few shots of this set were shooting down the tram line and the demolition of the old Entertainment Centre Car Park behind me.

I looked around down Quay Street (which was behind me at the time), and saw... her. The rather brief outfit certainly stood out.

Just the day before I had been on a photography forum in which one thread degraded into one of those boring fights between two people about the depth of field of a micro 4/3 vs larger sensors. You know, the kind of thread that degenerates into "your photos suck!", "no YOUR photos suck!" and which bores the living bejebbers out of everyone except the two involved. (Though the moderators obliterated many of their posts and sent them both to the sin bin, yay.) Nonetheless one of the things that I've wanted to do over the 2015 PAD is get a better feel for the DOF of my various lenses on the Olympus platform. Having a striking figure, slightly separated from a crowd immediately piqued my curiosity but the whole crowd was moving away fast and I had literally seconds to grab this shot.

And that wasn't quite enough time. It was long enough for one part of my brain to yell "SET FOCAL POINT ON HER SHOULDER BLADE, AIM, FIIIIRREEE!!!". But it wasn't long enough for another part of my brain to yell "NO YOU IDIOT, YOU'RE STILL ON f/8, OPEN IT UP TO f/5.6, OPEN! IT! UP!!" before the opportunity was lost.

I hung around that spot for another 10 minutes or so waiting for another chance to grab a shot like this, but not only was there a shortage of someone as sartorially striking, there wasn't even another crowd like this for them to stand out against. After this there were only people in groups of two or three going up the street.

While I could monkey with it in Photoshop that's really not the point; I'm left to ponder what this image would have looked like had it been more open and how much that would have reduced the DOF to make her stand out even more. (Especially from the two guys in front of her.)

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