There are a lot of things you can do to make a portrait more interesting, and shooting it in black and white mode is very popular. Many people tend to associate color with emotion, but some of the most powerful and evocative portraits are in monochrome. Black and white portraits have a certain “soulfulness” that…

The dictionary definition of depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthers objects that give an imaged judged to be in focus in a camera.

Struggling with Chromatic Aberration? Who doesn’t like crisp and lively photographs? Everyone wants to capture their life moments in a perfect photo. But if the picture does not depict the moment in the same way, it is quite disappointing. You go for a tropical vacation and the colors of your picture sometimes make the picture…

Portrait photographers most often want the focus of the image to be on the person and the background to fall away into creamy oblivion.  This look is achieved by creating a shallow depth of field using some combination of aperture, focal length and controlling the distance between the camera, subject and background.

When you take a photo, there will be an area in front and behind of your focal point (usually your subject) that is in focus.  If that zone is very large, we call that a deep depth of field.  If that zone is small, we call that a shallow depth of field.

Photographers often use the terms bokeh or sharpness to describe depth of field.  But they aren’t the same thing.  Let’s go back to our original, simple definition:

The depth of field is com­mon­ly expressed using units of length. The sub­ject dis­tance is mea­sured from the focal plane of the cam­era (whose posi­tion is indi­cat­ed on top of your cam­era with the focal plane indi­ca­tor, ɸ) to the point in object space on which the lens is focused. The total depth of field is the entire range of accept­able focus. it’s mea­sured from the near lim­it of accept­able focus, which lies between the cam­era and sub­ject, and the far lim­it of accept­able focus, which lies between the sub­ject and infin­i­ty.

Depth of fieldphotography examples

Aside from just portraits in general, you can use a shallow depth-of-field to create greater emphasis on the focal point of your image.  A very shallow depth-of-field creates a razor thin zone of focus.  So the area around your focal point will be sharp while the rest of the scene is blurry.

Shallowdepth of fieldphotography

Aper­ture. An essen­tial prop­er­ty of all lens­es is that chang­ing the aperture’s diam­e­ter when adjust­ing expo­sure also affects the depth of field. Increas­ing the aper­ture diam­e­ter results in less depth of field and decreas­ing the aper­ture diam­e­ter results in more depth of field. Keep in mind that effects of dif­frac­tion still apply, and it may not be prac­ti­cal to use the small­est aper­ture diam­e­ter pos­si­ble in all sit­u­a­tions (see Reci­procity Law).

For any giv­en cam­era, the fac­tors in deter­min­ing hyper­fo­cal dis­tance are the lens focal length and aper­ture size. Adjust­ments to the aper­ture will change the hyper­fo­cal dis­tance: a larg­er aper­ture diam­e­ter will pro­duce a hyper­fo­cal dis­tance that is far­ther out and a small­er aper­ture diam­e­ter will move the hyper­fo­cal dis­tance clos­er to the cam­era. Sim­i­lar­ly, a longer focal length will increase your hyper­fo­cal dis­tance while a short­er focal length will bring it clos­er. Since the hyper­fo­cal dis­tance describes the dis­tance to which your lens must be focused, sub­ject dis­tance isn’t a fac­tor.

In prac­tice, pho­tog­ra­phy is a two-dimen­sion­al medi­um that projects light onto a flat image sen­sor for record­ing. The posi­tion of the image sensor’s sur­face deter­mines the focal plane. When rays of light from a sub­ject point con­verge to a point on the focal plane, they’re con­sid­ered in focus. A sub­ject point that’s in focus is sit­u­at­ed along an imag­i­nary two-dimen­sion­al plane, known as the plane of focus, which rep­re­sents the the­o­ret­i­cal plane of crit­i­cal focus. [The plane of focus is par­al­lel to the image sen­sor and per­pen­dic­u­lar to the opti­cal axis.] Focus­ing the lens adjusts its dis­tance to the image sen­sor and shifts the plane of focus either toward or away from the cam­era in object space.

With winter upon many of us, questions are beginning to come about taking photos in the cold weather. While it’s true that for most of us, business slows down in the colder months and we find ourselves with less work than the rest of the year, winter can still be a great time to take photos….

We’ve gathered together our best photography tutorials in one location! Are you overwhelmed with learning photography?  There are so many awesome resources, it’s hard to know where to start.  Or what to learn next.  Or maybe you start learning one skill only to get sidetracked by a separate lesson and you fall down a rabbit…

Depth of field definitionmicroscope

Sometimes auto white balance is just a frenemy posing as a time-saving setting.  We’ll tell you why. Photographers are a picky bunch. We will tweak settings, move here and there and wait for the light to be juuuuusssst right before we take an image. We want to shoot in manual and choose focus points so…

Shallowdepth of fieldexamples

Sub­ject dis­tance. As the sub­ject (on which you’re focused) moves pro­gres­sive­ly clos­er to the cam­era, the depth of field decreas­es.

The closer your subject is to your camera, the shallower your depth of field in the image.  To visualize this, hold up your index finger at eye level at arm’s length.  Then slowly move your finger closer to your eye.  As your finger gets closer, the shallower the depth of field is.

Browse any photography forum and you’re likely to see the acronym DOF bandied about, along with accompanying discussions of a term called depth of field.  Understanding depth of field (DOF) and knowing how to use it correctly is an important skill for every photographer to have.  Mastering depth of field will allow you to photograph the scene as you envision it, from crisp, clean landscapes to portraits with that creamy blurry background.

Depth of fieldphotography settings

Getting the precise look you want takes practice and experimentation.  Changing any part of steps #1-5 above will result in a different look and feel to your image.  I can’t give you a precise formula.  You must play with distance, f-stop and even angles to bring your vision to life.  Understanding aperture and mastering the use of depth of field will help you create more compelling and visually interesting scenes.  Use depth of field to draw views into a scene, draw their eye to your focal point and create those WOW! images that pop off the screen.

As a young photographer in college, depth of field was one of the hardest concepts for me to grasp. When I finally understood it, years later, was when my skill as a photographer really started to take off.  So I’m going to forgo as much of the technical jargon as I can and approach DOF and focus in a way that made sense for me, with the hope that it finally clicks for you too!

The aperture is the opening in your lens that allows light to pass through it to the sensor.  It is usually the first setting we determine when shooting an image because it affects our scene greatly.  A large aperture has a very wide opening that allows a lot of light in.  A small aperture is a smaller opening so less light gets in.

Focal length. Lens focal length is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in man­ag­ing the depth of field. Short focal length lens­es pro­duce greater depth of field, while long focal length lens­es pro­duce shal­low depth of field.

Have you ever wondered how photographers get those gorgeous glowing outdoor portraits of their clients? You know – the ones that evoke thoughts of happy days and lazy summer evenings, using only backlight photography.  After diffused light aka cloudy days, backlight photography is one of an outdoor photographer’s best kinds of lighting. Soon you’ll know…

It’s impor­tant to under­stand that the depth of field is a the­o­ret­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion that does­n’t take into account lens aber­ra­tions, light dif­frac­tion, and post-cap­ture manip­u­la­tions such as sharp­en­ing and crop­ping.

Pho­tog­ra­phers exploit the depth of field all of the time to achieve effects such as deep or shal­low focus. Deep focus pho­tog­ra­phy relies on a con­sid­er­able depth of field to achieve accept­able sharp­ness in the fore­ground, mid­dle-ground, and back­ground of the pic­ture. This effect is often asso­ci­at­ed with land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy (where much of the image appears in sharp focus) and some forms of street pho­tog­ra­phy. Shal­low focus pho­tog­ra­phy fea­tures a nar­row or small depth of field, which is char­ac­ter­ized by a sharply focused sub­ject and an out of focus, or blurred, back­ground and fore­ground. This tech­nique is fre­quent­ly used by por­trait photographers—especially those work­ing on loca­tion as opposed to in studio—because it visu­al­ly sep­a­rates the sub­ject from the scene. Bokeh describes the aes­thet­ic qual­i­ty and char­ac­ter of how lens­es ren­der the out of focus ele­ments in a pic­ture.

Think of a large pool with varying levels of water, from 1.4 to 32 feet deep.  Think of the numerical f-stop number as the water level in a pool.  The smaller that number, the SHALLOWER the water is, right?  Conversely, the larger that numerical number, the DEEPER the water.

Some lens­es have a depth of field scale print­ed direct­ly on their bar­rels or under a trans­par­ent plas­tic win­dow. The depth of field scale con­sists of sev­er­al pairs of num­bers on either side of the dis­tance index, with each pair rep­re­sent­ing an f‑stop of cor­re­spond­ing val­ue. When the aper­ture is set to one of the f‑stops indi­cat­ed on the scale, the range on the dis­tance scale that lies between this pair is con­sid­ered the depth of field. The f‑stop lines on the far side of the focus index rep­re­sent the far lim­its of accept­able focus and the lines on the near side of the focus index rep­re­sent the near lim­its of accept­able focus.

Depth of field definitionphotography

It comes from the Japanese word “boke”, meaning blur or fuzziness.  Photographers often use it when talking about a background that is out of focus.  That’s not exactly true.  Bokeh is really defined as the way the lens renders out of focus points of light.  So it’s technically about the quality of an out of focus background, not just that the background is out of focus.  That may sound like I’m splitting hairs.  But bokeh is more about how that out of focus background looks, not just that it’s out of focus.

The hyper­fo­cal dis­tance is the clos­est focus dis­tance at which the depth of  field’s far lim­it of accept­able sharp­ness aligns with infin­i­ty. When a lens is focused to the hyper­fo­cal dis­tance, its near lim­it of accept­able sharp­ness will reside at half that dis­tance to the cam­era. If your lens has the depth of field scale, the sim­plest method for focus­ing to the hyper­fo­cal dis­tance is by rotat­ing the focus ring until the line cor­re­spond­ing to your f‑stop’s far lim­it of accept­able sharp­ness aligns with the infin­i­ty mark.

Depth of field definitionlens

For example, a portrait may have a shallow DOF.  There is a very small zone of that is in focus in the scene from front to back.

Light from any point in object space emerges from the rear ele­ment of a lens as a cone. When a sub­ject point is in focus, the apex of its light cone coin­cides with the focal plane, which forms an image point in the pho­to­graph. If the sub­ject point does­n’t come into per­fect focus on the image sen­sor, it cre­ates a small blurred cir­cle called a cir­cle of con­fu­sion. The three fac­tors that con­trol the depth of field—the aper­ture, focal length, and sub­ject distance—do so by vary­ing the size of the blur cir­cles. The diam­e­ter of the cir­cle of con­fu­sion with the res­o­lu­tion of the image sen­sor is used to cal­cu­late the depth of field.

Shallowdepth of field

Lenses with a longer focal length have a narrow field of view, so a smaller portion of the background fills the frame.  This makes the background look magnified.  Photographers call this lens compression.  A longer focal length will squash everything together in your scene, making it look like there is physical space from front to back of your scene than there is.  Just remember, the longer the focal length, the shallower the depth of field.

There’s no tru­ly objec­tive mea­sure for what qual­i­fies as an accept­able degree of sharp­ness con­cern­ing the depth of field. A pho­to­graph that looks ade­quate­ly sharp when enlarged to fit a 15-inch note­book dis­play may appear slight­ly unsharp when expand­ed to a 30-inch desk­top dis­play. A 24×36 inch print may look sharp from across the room, less sharp from a com­fort­able read­ing dis­tance, and down­right blur­ry from the tip of your nose.

The sensor of your camera will also affect the size of depth of field you can get.  The smaller the sensor, the larger the depth of field and vice-versa.  Smart phone or point-and-shoot digital cameras have very small sensors, so it is hard to create an image with a very shallow depth of field.  That’s one of the many reasons professional photographers rely on full-frame DSLR digital cameras – the sensor size helps provide more flexibility of depth-of-field.

An image with shallow depth of field can be very sharp, or crisp, with clearly defined edges.  An image with a deep depth of field can be soft, or a little blurry, because proper technique wasn’t use.  And an image with beautiful bokeh can also be sharp.  Photogrpahers often use these terms interchangeably, but they are all separate concepts and require different techniques to achieve the look in camera.

Crit­i­cal focus may only be achieved at pre­cise­ly one plane of focus. All sub­ject points that align with this plane will also be in sharp focus (assum­ing your lens does­n’t exhib­it cur­va­ture of field); any devi­a­tion from this plane results in pro­gres­sive defo­cus­ing since the light rays no longer con­verge at the focal plane. Nev­er­the­less, in prac­tice, there’s an area just ahead of and behind the plane of focus that will be ren­dered as accept­ably sharp in the pho­to­graph because the devi­a­tions from absolute con­ver­gence are too small to notice. The depth of field describes the total region sur­round­ing the plane of focus in which objects are ren­dered as accept­ably sharp accord­ing to the sub­jec­tive stan­dards estab­lished for a par­tic­u­lar pho­to­graph.

Aperture affects how bright your scene is, but it also controls depth of field.  As you make the physical aperture opening smaller, you increase your depth of field.  I’m not going to get into a technical discussion of f-stops and how they work.  If you’re interested in that and want to geek out a bit, click here for a full explanation.   What’s important to remember when it comes to f-stops and depth of field is this:

In pho­tog­ra­phy, space ahead of a lens is known as object space, while space behind is called the image space. In the­o­ry, rays of light from any point in object space should con­verge, or focus, at some point behind the lens. As the dis­tance between the lens and sub­ject changes, the dis­tance behind the lens at which the sub­ject is focused also changes. A sub­ject far­ther from the cam­era will focus clos­er behind the lens than a near­by sub­ject. [This is why macro lens­es are capa­ble of such a long exten­sion: to bring very close objects into focus.]