Tag Archives: depth of field

oooopen wide!

I absolutely love the beautiful and artsy quality of shallow depth of field (DOF) that results from shooting wide open. This is especially true of lenses that can open up to f/2.8 or wider . Don’t know what DOF means? Click here

Here are two shots of Lacepod at different apertures.

Canon 100mm Macro at f/13
f/13

Canon 100mm Macro at f/2.8
f/2.8

FYI to compact camera users: Although most compact cameras have wider apertures available (like f2.8), it will not give the same results as an SLR. This is because the lenses of compact cameras have very short focal lengths which means their aperture openings are significantly smaller than on an SLR. Small aperture openings result in sharper images so images are going to have much more depth of field (more in focus) than the SLR equivalent.

fall in january

Don’t forget the dead stuff! These dried leaves were a rusty red color and with the sun behind them, they glowed. The color in the background is from an Arizona Ash tree with a few yellow leaves left. The blue is the sky.
dired leaves

What makes this photo is the use of what’s called “shallow depth of field”. It means I used a large aperture (or small number). Compact cameras have a difficult time getting this kind of depth of field because their small sensors don’t have as much of a range of f/stops. So even though you have f2.8, it’s still much sharper than on an SLR. There are tricks to help, though. For instance, stand far away from your subject and then zoom in using f/2.8 and you might get lucky.

Click here for a link to an excellent video about Depth of Field.