Focal lengthexamples

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Here’s what’s fascinating. You know this intuitively already. When you squint your eyes, you’re making the “aperture” of your pupil smaller. Less light is entering your pupil, but the way it enters the pupil and focuses in your eye creates a slightly clearer image.

Another way to control depth of field is by changing the focal length. If you have a zoom lens, you can change the focal length by simply zooming in or out, bringing the subject closer or farther. If you have prime lenses where the focal length is fixed, then you can change the focal length by changing your lens.

A lens with a shorter focal length like 30mm will have a wider field of view than a lens with a longer focal length like 70mm. A lens that has a wider field of view can capture more of the environment.

A short focal length ( like 15mm) will result in a deeper (wider, broader) depth of field. Here, more of the tea cups are in focus.

Short focal lengthvs long

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We’ll have another look at this photo, where I am very close to the subject. Again, the eyes are in focus, but things closer or farther are not in focus.

Those are very educational, thanks for the DOF Master site. That sort of instant feedback is good for learning for sure.

All I’ve done here is use the zoom feature. The f-stop and location of the camera are the same. I’ve simply zoomed in to the tea cups, keeping the focus point the same.

Thank you for the guidance. There is a WEB site at which you can input the lens Focal Length, the f-stop, and distance to a particular object that you want to be in focus. The calculator then provides the near and far distances for which the scene is sharp:

Have a look at this animated GIF showing 4 images captured with different macro lenses while keeping Him-Dude™ relatively the same size in the frame:

The focal length affects how much of your scene is in the frame, how close objects in the frame appear, and the size of the subject.

Or sometimes, you might see a lens that has two numbers, such as 28-300mm. This means that the lens does not have a fixed focal length. You can change it by zooming in or out.

Up to now, I’ve mentioned how to achieve these different looks by discussing aperture, focal length and distance from the subject. Now, let’s look at this another way. Let’s look at this by what appearance you wish to achieve.

These are just some of the questions I ask myself when deciding on a lens. You can find those in my toy photography workflow.

A shallow depth of field means that many elements in a photo may be out of focus. The photo below has a shallow depth of field because only the area around her eyes are reasonably in focus.

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What isfocal lengthof lens

Aperture is the opening of the lens. The larger the opening, the more light comes in. But it also affects how clearly we see certain things.

How to measureshort focal length

While I doubt any of us will use this WEB site while out in the field it appears to be useful for acquiring a sense of focus range

A long focal length ( like 30mm) will result in a shallower (narrower) depth of field. Here, less of the tea cups are in focus.

The depth of field typically changes gradually. It typically does not occur where the subject is in focus, and suddenly — BAM! — something is out of focus. No. It’s gradual.

The below photo has a large aperture of f/2.8. It’s letting a lot of light in. See how the depth of field is shallower and only a small amount is in focus?

Each lens has a focal length written on it. You may have seen a lens of 15mm, which is a very short focal length. Or you might have seen that a lens is 300mm, which is a very long focal length.

I hope this helps. We’ve discussed several different ways to change the depth of field. This can greatly improve your images. If you have any questions, please share below!

Short focal lengthphotography

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There are more things to think about than the result of the photo: you might be limited physically with how close you can get, whether you have a tripod or not, how your camera body deals with low light and stabilization, and so on.

The focal length of the lens is one of the first things I think about when creating a photo. The lens I choose has a huge effect on the composition and the emotion I want to capture so it’s important to understand what different focal lengths do for an image.

I’ll show you some photos. While viewing these, remember that a higher number like f/22 means that the aperture is smaller, while a smaller number, like f/2.8, means that the aperture is larger. That was confusing to me when I first began, but you get used to it. Let’s have a look at three photos.

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Short focal lengthchart

A deep depth of field means that there’s lots of elements in focus. For example, a photo of a landscape that is reasonably far away typically has everything in focus, such as the photo below. After all, if we look at a landscape, typically most of it does look in focus to us, doesn’t it?

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In this photo of Joshua Tree National Park at night, everything is reasonably far away, and therefore all is sharp and in focus.

Longfocal length

The focal length changed the composition as a result: my hero is framed within the door in the photo on the right but not so much on the left.

Notice the door in the background appears much further away and smaller in the 30mm shot vs the 70mm, but the distance between it and Him-Dude is physically the same. I didn’t move the minifig at all, just the camera.

The below photo has a medium aperture of f/8. This is a common aperture for photographing things like street photography or landscapes where you want a lot of the scene that is farther away from you in focus.

The further away you are from things, the broader the depth of field. You know this intuitively because if you are standing with things far away, everything appears sharp and in focus.

Short focal lengthcanon

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Depth of field, sometimes written as DoF, is the amount of distance that is reasonably in focus. It’s the range of area that is acceptably sharp in a photo.

The photo on the right has a lot more of the environment in the frame than the photo on the left. If context and surroundings are important to tell the story, then use a wider angle lens, i.e. one with a shorter focal length.

We’re going to discuss depth of field. But I’m going to try and keep it really simple. When I’ve given workshops and busted out charts, most people’s eyes glazed over. So … no charts. Just photos.

Emotionally, the two feel different as well. The shot on the left feels more immersive while the shot on the right feels more isolated.

A creative question. Excellent. By controlling the depth of field, we can focus the viewer’s attention on a specific subject or place. This is powerful, and it’s a lot of fun! This makes controlling depth of field one of the most creative decisions that we can make.