Tutorial: Depth of Field (repost)

[JakeB.]

I was falling asleep last night trying to resize these, so the aperture set had to wait… Depth of Field (DOF) is a measure of how much of your picture is in focus and it directly correlates with the aperture you choose. The Larger the aperture (smaller the number), the less that is going to be in focus. Conversely, the smaller the aperture the more that is going to be in focus. All of these shots were taken using my D70 and a Nikon 80-200 f/2.8 at 200mm. The bottles were placed approximately one foot apart on a picnic table. Please ignore the color balance in these shots. To Preface the pics, when considering the DOF keep in mind that about 1/3 of the acceptable sharpness is in front of your focal point and about 2/3’s of the acceptable sharpness is behind the focal point. 1. f/2.8 – At approximately a 15 foot shooting distance at 200mm the DOF is about 2 inches Here you can see that the focal point is on the front of the bottle. The focus is already gone by the back edge of the bottle. One of the things I love about this lens is the amazing bokeh; so creamy… mmm. With such a shallow DOF and such nice bokeh, you can hardly tell what’s in the background. 2. f/5.6 – Still at 15 feet away and a 200mm focal length, the DOF is about 4.5 inches You can see that the practical DOF with in this shooting situation hasn’t changed much. But, the severity of the bokeh has decreased some, freeing up a little detail in the background. 3. f/11 – The DOF increases to about 9 inches Here you can see the acceptable sharpness extends about 6 inches past the bottle, not quite to the next bottle. You can also probably tell what’s in the background now, and there’s a couple spots of sensor dust starting to show. 4. f/22 – The DOF increases quite a bit this time to about 18 inches The level of acceptable sharpness now goes about 12 inches or so past the focal point, which now brings the second bottle into focus. The background is now clearly distinguishable and the sensor dust is prominent.

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[RiceRocketDave]

All of these tutorials are great Jake. I think you should sticky them all

[JakeB.]

These were all part of the Photography 101 thread...

I replaced that thread, the guidelines thread, and the links/review thread with one new thread.
The GUIDELINES / FAQ / TUTORIALS / REVIEWS / LINKS thread is in the sticky section and has links to all these tutorials for easy reference.

[RiceRocketDave]

Guess I should have looked before I posted that

[JakeB.]

It's all good...

These tutorials are all being posted seperately so there can be a more in-depth and direct dialogue of how it works and what works better, and such.

Hope everyone gets involved.

[HuskerHybrid]

great write-up

[hypetrain]

thanks just got my ae1 and this helped alot

[IT'S ME DAVID]

subscribed.

[itrSteez]

http://www.letusdirect.com/dep....html

That tutorial can't be beat, It's geared towards guys buying their 35mm adapter for video cameras but the concept is exactly the same.

[JakeB.]

Originally Posted by itrSteez

http://www.letusdirect.com/dep....html

That tutorial can't be beat, It's geared towards guys buying their 35mm adapter for video cameras but the concept is exactly the same.

Thanks for the link... that's a great tutorial

[canuckr]

DOF Calculator... I sure this has been posted somewhere here, to lazy to look...

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Good write up tho...

[Carlo]

Ok I tried some rolling shots the other day since I just got a Rebel XTi for my birthday. Only the center of the car was in focus, is DOF my problem?

Here are the pics I took, resized.

[Import Driver]

Looks like motion blur to me.