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Ah, depth of field. As photo history geeks, we feel certain in our knowledge that every photographer everywhere has asked the pivotal question: “Hold up, what the deuce is depth of field and why is it important?” Yes, the age-old question.
Simply put, depth of field (DoF) is the area of your photograph that is sharp and clear. While your camera can only focus in on a single point, your final image will have an area around that single point that appears to be in focus as well – that is the DoF of that image. DoF is important because it quickly defines your subject.
A narrow DoF eliminates distractions from your subject and typically used in portrait, wildlife and sports photography. While a wide DoF ensures clarity through the entire image, usually best for landscape, cityscapes and big ol’ group shots.
Depth of field is controlled through focus and aperture settings (the f-stops.) So, if your camera has manual controls, making the aperture number smaller (toward f/1.4) gives you shallower DoF, and raising it up (toward f/22) makes everything in your photo tack sharp.
Check out this extremely detailed lesson from Digital Photography School for everything you ever wanted to know about DoF and how to use it to best capture your subjects.
Then, if you’re already picking up what we’re putting down take your DoF play further, by faking extremely deep or super shallow DoF (no expensive lenses required.)
So how deep does the rabbit hole go? Depends on your DoF!
DoF: Make it and Fake it
Photo by Bruce Wunderlich
© Erin for Photojojo, 2015. |
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