Photo Secrets|Depth of Field Techniques
Photo Secrets|Depth Of Field Described
Depth of field is an important photo secrets, very simply stated, is how much of foreground and background you put into your photograph.
If you take any photographic scene, the sharpness in front of, and behind your subject is what you would call depth of field. If your subject is the main attraction with an out offocus front and back, you would have a shallow depth of field, and if you have the whole scene in sharp focus, both front and back, youwould have a wide depth of field.
Photo Secrets| Depth Of Field Example
Lets put this into use by considering taking a photo of a rose bush that sits in the middle of your garden. Like any good photo you want to get a number of shots of your subject, all taken at different settings. This allows you to decide which photo when done is most pleasing to your eye and conveys your subject the best.
Photo Secrets|First Image
With your first shot you make the rose and everything around it – the garden and its surroundings – very sharp. All elements in this image are sharp and clear.
Photo Secrets| Second image
For your second image, you wish toplace more emphasis on the rose, and have everything else slightly out of focus. You still see various different forms in the backgroundof this shot and you might be able to recognize them for what they are, but they’re not so well defined as earlier. Foreground elements, are still very recognizable.
Photo Secrets|Third image
For your third exposure the rose is more prominent and eye catching, while both the foreground and the background aren’t sharp, and most of it is blurred and blended in together.
Photo Secrets|Fourth image
The fourth exposure that you shoot, the focus is solely on the rose to the exclusion of everything else, causing both the foreground and the background to be completely unrecognizable as anything other than a convenient anonymous backdrop for you main focal point, the rose.
Photo Secrets|Considerations Of Depthof Field
There are a couple of things that come into consideration when you’re looking into depth of field and those go along the lines of — image magnification, lens aperture setting and the focal length of your lens. When each of these three variables comes into play, you’re faced with a variety of different options to choose from, and each of these will give you different results.
And this is where experience comes in.If you’ve been playing around a bit and experimenting with your camera, taking many different shots, you will have found out for yourself what different focal lengths, aperture settings and image magnifications come into play. For instance, the wider you open the lens aperture the more light that comes in, and the less sharp your photograph is going to be in certain areas.
The smaller you make your lens aperture, the less light comes in and the sharper your image will be.You can use these properties very nicely to control depth of field inyour photographs. You just need to go out with your camera and try different settings in order to be able to fully grasp and appreciatewhat depth of field is.
