Article Directory :: Arts & Entertainment Articles

Photography 101 - Depth of Field

By Autumn Lockwood

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 19Aug2010 Word count: 587 Viewed: 235 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Understanding and manipulating depth of field in an image is a key skill of professional photographers. A firm grasp on this concept can improve the quality of your work and can provide you with countless alternative ways to shoot one subject. Although depth of field may seem confusing, with a little practice it will quickly become second nature.

Depth of Field Defined

In a photograph, depth of field can be thought of as how "deep" the focus of an image goes. In more simple terms, the depth of field refers to the difference between the items in the background losing clarity compared to the subject in focus. Think of depth of field as the relationship between the focused and blurry elements of your photograph.

For instance, a photograph of a flower with the entire background showing as blurry would have a low depth of field, while a photograph of a long subway platform with both near and far subjects in relatively clear focus would have a high depth of field. In either of those examples, changing the depth of field would have a dramatic impact on what the viewer experiences when looking at the final image.

What Influences Depth of Field?

The primary influence on the depth of field of any particular image is the length of its exposure. The longer a frame of film or digital sensor has to absorb the scene it is being exposed to, the greater amount of detail it will be able to accurately reproduce. Longer exposures will always result in greater depth of field, even if at unperceivable levels.

When it comes to changing depth of field, you can control it by increasing or decreasing the exposure time. You can do this by changing the shutter speed of your camera; slow speeds (60 and lower) will cause longer exposures and greater depth, while fast speeds (125 and higher) will decrease exposure times and cause the opposite.

How to Control Depth of Field

You can purposefully force greater depth of field into an image, however this will require manually adjusting the aperture settings of your camera. Because a longer shutter speed is required to add depth of field, less light must be allowed to enter through the lens. If you increase your exposure but forget to close down your camera aperture, you'll end up with images that are over exposed.

Changing the aperture involves moving the f-stop (often the ring around the lens behind the focus ring) to whatever number lets in the best amount of light. Any new camera will let you pick a shutter speed and then will automatically adjust the f stop, but with older cameras, you'll have to play around with the light meter until the shutter speed syncs with the right aperture setting.

Helpful Tip: If you're working with high depth of field images it's likely that you'll be working with very long exposure times (depending upon the quality of your light). Shots of this nature will almost always require a tripod to prevent blurring from camera-shake.

Depth of field is a powerful tool in the photographer's toolbox and should be considered in every photograph you take. Objects in a photograph all lend themselves to the story that image is trying to tell - what is and isn't in focus can mean quite a lot to the relationships between those objects. Consider how you could use depth of field to impact what you can say about your subjects as this will help make your images more powerful and interesting.

EasyPublish™ this article - publishers click here

More articles by Autumn Lockwood

Free Report!
Ten Essential Secrets Of Article Marketing ... Grab Your Free
Copy Now:

Need Content?
Regular Top Quality Content for your Blog, Ezine or Website ...
Delivered Direct,
For Free!
Click For Details