Unit 1- Camera Lens Technique- 1- Shallow Depth of Field

1. Make a photograph that emloys a shallow depth of field.

Depth of field is the amount of the scene that appears in focus in an image. A lens is able to focus precisely on a subject at one distance and the decrease in focus is gradual on either side of the focused distance.

It may be more effective in an image to have a shallow depth of field, this would mean that the subject is perhaps clearly focused and the background out of focus creating an exphasis only on the subject- this is useful in portrait photography.

It may also be desireable to have a large depth of field where most distances are in focus, this is particularly useful in landscape photography and would be achieved using the aperture settings on the camera, the f numbers control the aperture, and the larger the f number is, the smaller the aperture ring and the larger depth of field. The easiest way to remember this is probably, large DOF- large f number.

Image from Wikepedia

This is an example of a shallow depth of field using a low f number of 2.8, this creates emphasis on the main focal point, which is the cat.

Image from Wikepedia

This is an example of a large depth of field using an f number of F32. So here a lot more of the image is in focus, although for this particular subject, a shallow depth of field would probably work better.

I have a few examples of a shallow depth of field that have been produced throughout the Systems and Processes brief but i wanted to do something new for this. I booked the studio as i had a few things i needed to cover and here are my images.

F5.6, 1/320 Sec, ISO 100, handheld, edited in LR

Here as you can see there is a slightly darker band across the bottom of the image, i am pretty sure this is because my sync speed for my camera is between 1/60 and 1/250 and here i have used a faster shutter speed. This can however be edited out in Lightroom or Photoshop but there maybe some loss of detail because of this. Here all i have done is increased the exposure and cropped the image slightly.

F5.6, 1/320 Sec, ISO 100, handheld,edited in LR

I think this is a better example of a shallow depth of field, because the model is closer to the camera this increased the distance between her and the teddy bear, making it more out of focus than on the previous example.