Compose a photo mode shot

Reviewed

Every control previews live, with no preview button and no apply step.

Take a screenshot covers the capture itself and the Clean Shot tick.

In the menus: ESC → + PHOTO MODE

Frame the shot

FOV: runs from 10 to 130. Low values zoom in and flatten the scene, high values pull back and bend it.

Letterbox puts cinematic bars across the top and bottom, and they appear in shots.

Choose a filter

Filter: is one list of 6: None, Warm, Cool, Night, Sepia and Holocam.

Add vignette and grain

Vignette: runs from 0 to 100 and darkens the edges of the frame.

Grain: also runs from 0 to 100 and lays animated film grain over the picture.

Blur with depth of field

Four rows drive it, and it is the one photo effect drawn by the renderer rather than as a flat pane over the frame:

  • Depth of Field: 0 to 30, how hard everything off the focal plane blurs, where 0 is off
  • Focus: 0 automatically follows whatever the camera points at, while 1 to 100 fixes the focal distance
  • Foreground: 0 to 30, how hard things nearer than the focal plane blur
  • Focus assist outlines whatever is currently sharp while composing, but never appears in the countdown or finished shot

Prefer the console?

/letterbox

Every control on the panel is a cvar, so any of them can be typed instead of dragged:

  • sf_photo_filter- Picks the colour filter by number: 0 none, 1 warm, 2 cool, 3 night, 4 sepia, 5 holocam.
  • sf_photo_vignette- Darkens the frame edges, from 0 to 100.
  • sf_photo_grain - Animated film grain, from 0 to 100.
  • sf_photo_dof - Depth-of-field blur strength, from 0 to 30.
  • sf_photo_doffocus - Focus distance, where 0 means focus automatically on whatever the camera is aimed at.
  • sf_photo_dofnear - Foreground blur, from 0 to 30, where 20 is neutral and 0 turns it off.
  • sf_photo_haze - Only inside Photo Mode. Runs from 0 to 100 and pulls the map's existing distance fog in closer to the eye. It cannot conjure fog where there is none, so on most maps it does nothing. Ships at 0.
  • /sf_doflock - freezes the automatic focus where it sits, and it is bindable. Fly the photo camera covers it.