Benjamin Lin Photography

Introduction to Photography Part II

Tutorials: Introduction to Photography Part II Depth of Field

Many people think that as long as they have the correct exposure on a photo that is in focus, then they have a good picture. That is why so many people have little point-andshoot cameras that do everything for them: find the focus, calculate the correct combination of aperture, shutter speed and ISO and voila good photograph. Imagine yourself having a picnic in the park. Your family is sitting on the grass, and you point your automatic camera at them and take a picture. Let's assume that the camera did its job correctly: your family is in perfect focus, the trees are slightly in focus behind them, and you've got wonderful memories. Why would you want to change any part of that photo? Chances are, you won't. But let's say that you move in closer to your family, and someone is laughing at a joke, so you want to capture a close-up of that laugh and that moment. Your automatic camera takes a snapshot and everything is in focus. It is a good picture, and you're quite proud of the fact that you captured that moment so well. The photo is good, but chances are, it can be better. In Part 1 of this tutorial, we were introduced to aperture, shutter speed and ISO as elements to control exposure. In these next few tutorials, we will learn about how those three elements affect other aspects of photography, such as:
z z z

depth of field (DOF) motion blur graininess

The use of these additional elements may be able to improve the overall artistic quality of your photographs.

Depth of Field
Let's use a visual example of our park scenario. The first photo below is of a mother and her baby. The baby is in focus, the mother is slightly out of focus and the row of trees in the background is nicely blurred so that you can still tell what it is. The trees are actually a lot more blurry than an automatic camera would have rendered it. On Auto mode, those trees would most likely appear much more defined because they would have been more in focus.

www.benlinphoto.com

Page 1 of 9

Benjamin Lin Photography

Introduction to Photography Part II

This next photo below is a close-up of the baby smiling. The bridge of her nose is in focus, while the right side of her face (left/middle part of the photo) starts to fade out of focus softly.

The background in the second photo is so out of focus that you can barely tell what it is. This is intentional the background does not distract and take away from the focal point of the photograph, which is the baby's face. This isolates the face and makes it pop out of the photo. Chances are, your camera would not be able to produce this effect if it were left on Auto mode. The background might come out a little blurry, but you would probably be able to easily identify each tree back there.

www.benlinphoto.com

Page 2 of 9

Benjamin Lin Photography

Introduction to Photography Part II

So why does a photo where the subject is in focus, and the background/foreground is out of focus, seem more pleasing than when everything is in focus? It goes back to our wonderful eyes and this time, our brains as well. Did you ever notice that when you're reading something, whether it's a bottle of vitamins, a book or this tutorial, that the only thing in focus is the item that you're reading? Even the fingers that you're holding the item with are temporarily blurred out until you intentionally focus on them. That's what a small depth of field does it simulates your eyes' ability to focus only on the subject so that your brain can concentrate on that one thing instead of on everything else around it. Our eyes have natural depth of field adjustment capabilities that help our brains to process information in a more efficient manner. This is half the reason why I believe depth of field is so important in photography. Of course, not every photograph works when only one thing is in focus. An example of a photograph where you would want a lot of things to be in focus at the same time is a landscape shot. If you have a picture of an entire mountain with a lot of trees on it, and clouds on top of it, you would generally want all of that to be in focus. This is desirable because this time, the entire vista is the subject, not just a single spot on the mountain or a single tree. If you were seeing this in person, your eyes would most likely be scanning the entire landscape to process all of that beautiful imagery. A photograph's ability to mimic our eyes' job of keeping the entire landscape in focus is the other half of the reason why I believe depth of field is important in photography.

Controlling Depth of Field

Let's go back to the two portraits above. The second photo was taken by telling the camera to use a very shallow depth of field. Depth of field, or DOF for short, is the area in which a subject is in focus. Here, that space is very small, so only a portion of the baby's face could fit inside of it. The further away an object is from that area of focus, the blurrier it gets. That's why the edge of her face is slightly blurry while the trees in the background are completely unrecognizable. The terms small, shallow, and narrow are commonly used to describe this type of DOF. So how do we control the depth of field? Depth of field is controlled by the aperture, or the size of the lens opening. The larger the aperture:
z z z z z

the larger the lens opening the smaller the f-stop number the shallower the depth of field the smaller the area of focus similar to your eyes focusing only on the item that you're reading

Conversely, the smaller the aperture:

z z z z z

the smaller the lens opening the larger the f-stop number the greater the depth of field the greater the area of focus similar to your eyes focusing on an entire landscape instead of on just one tree

Here are some comparative photos that I took at different apertures. These are pretty boring photos, but the railing in the background provides a great example of depth of field changes.

www.benlinphoto.com

Page 3 of 9

Benjamin Lin Photography

Introduction to Photography Part II

Shot at f/4:

Shot at f/5.6:

www.benlinphoto.com

Page 4 of 9

Benjamin Lin Photography

Introduction to Photography Part II

Shot at f/8:

Shot at f/16:

www.benlinphoto.com

Page 5 of 9

Benjamin Lin Photography

Introduction to Photography Part II

Shot at f/22:

The changes in depth of field from one photo to the next may not be very obvious. But if you compare the first or second shot at f/4 or f/5.6 to the last one at f/22, then the DOF changes are pretty obvious. At f/4, the railing is pretty blurry, the plant in the lower right corner is a green blob, and even the small green pepper behind the red one is a little out of focus. That's because the depth of field was so small that it only allowed the red pepper and the the leaf on its left to be inside the focal area. Now look at the image at f/22. The railing has definitive and harder lines, the plant in the lower right corner is distinguishable as a small bush, and the little green pepper is in better focus. Note that in all of these photos, the point of focus did not change only the depth of field changed. In case you're wondering, yes, I do walk around thinking of ways to test the aperture on all of my lenses. The pepper photos were taken over a year ago and sat around on my hard drive without an audience. I took these photos before I even knew I was going to write a tutorial illustrating DOF. Why? Because I'm a photographer. That's just how I roll. OK, back to the tutorial. The next question is: when would you want to use a shallower DOF vs. a greater a DOF? Well, we already know that we generally want a shallower DOF for portraits and a great DOF for landscapes, so let's look at some other examples. Using the pepper images above, you can see that at f/4, the red pepper stands out because it is nicely isolated from its background. This isolation allows your audience to focus on the ripe red pepper instead of on the background (simulating what your eyes would do when you are actually looking at the pepper in person). However, if we needed to see what was going on behind the railing, we would not be able to do so in this picture. Therefore, you would want to use a shallow DOF when you:
z z z

are trying to isolate your subject from its background or foreground do not care about showing the details in your background or foreground are trying to hide your background or foreground

www.benlinphoto.com

Page 6 of 9

Benjamin Lin Photography

Introduction to Photography Part II

Portraits of people and pets are great for using a shallow depth of field because it really puts the focus on them instead of on everything else. The same red pepper at f/22 doesn't stand out as much as at f/4. However, you can now see a lot of what is going on in the background because it's in better focus than the previous images (simulating what your eyes and brain would be doing if you were trying to concentrate on both the pepper and the background at the same time). Personally, I find the f/22 photo a little too busy because I'm distracted by the more defined lines in the railing along with the houses and trees behind it. If my assignment was to shoot the pepper only, then the f/5.6 shot would be my favorite one. So, to sum up, you would want to use a greater DOF when you:
z z z

are trying to blend your subject into its background or foreground care about showing the details in your background or foreground are trying to display your background or foreground

Landscape and architecture photos are great for using a large depth of field because you generally want as much detail as possible in all aspects of those photos. Here's a more subtle application of depth of field. Shooting these comparison images brought me way back to grade school. Shot at f/16:

www.benlinphoto.com

Page 7 of 9

Benjamin Lin Photography

Introduction to Photography Part II

Shot at f/32:

In the first photo, I used a larger aperture (f/16) to give me a shallower depth of field. That is why the sword that Snake Eyes (the guy in black) is holding is a little blurrier than in the second photo (shot at f/32). In fact, Snake Eyes is more in focus overall in the second photo (look at the red insignia on his shoulder). And so is the brown object in the background, which happens to be a cardboard box. Which photo you prefer really depends on the message that you're trying to convey. For me, the shot at f/16 makes me concentrate more on Storm Shadow (the guy in white) because it's too painful to try to process the blurry Snake Eyes. So if I wanted my audience to focus predominantly on Snake Eyes, this is the photo that I would choose. At f/16, it's almost as if Snake eyes doesn't matter; he could be any other Joe trying to kick Storm Shadow's behind. But if I wanted to highlight the action and the tension between these two sworn enemies, I would use the photo at f/32 instead. With Snake Eyes more in focus, especially his sword, my eyes drift back and forth between Storm Shadow's eyes, his hand that's gripping his sword, his sword itself, then continuing on to focus on Snake Eye's sword and sometimes down to his raised black arm. All of that movement that your eyes are making translates to ACTION in your brain. Your brain is busy because your eyes are busy. I leave you with this final shot, which is a favorite of mine from the G.I. Joe photo shoot. I used f/11 here to get an even shallower depth of field so that the weapons on Storm Shadow's extended arm are just blurry enough that you will ignore them in order to focus on his sinister plastic eyes. Of course, now that I pointed that out, you're going to concentrate on his blurry weapons, but if you look at the photo enough times, you'll start glossing over them.

www.benlinphoto.com

Page 8 of 9

Benjamin Lin Photography

Introduction to Photography Part II

Shot at f/11:

So there you have it three examples of when you would use different depths of field to convey a message. And yes, I had a ton of fun posing these guys for this shot. Special thanks to Linda Orlando for letting me borrow her gear, especially her awesome new Canon macro lens, for these G.I. Joe shots. You now have a basic understanding of why you would change the camera's aperture settings in order to dictate the depth of field that you want. In the next few parts of the Introduction to Photography Tutorial, we will explore situations where you would want to change the camera's shutter speed or ISO to get different effects. Camera Info and Settings z Portraits taken with Canon EOS 5D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro, ISO 100 at 100mm and 1/200 sec z Peppers taken with Canon EOS Rebel XTi, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS, ISO 100 at 105mm and 1/1000 sec, 1/400 sec, 1/250 sec, 1/60 sec and 1/30 sec, respectively z G.I. Joe action figures taken with Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 180mm f/3.5L Macro, ISO 100 at 180mm and 1.3 sec, 5 sec and 0.6 sec, respectively

www.benlinphoto.com

Page 9 of 9