Depth of Field

My Uncle once asked me how people get pictures of a nearby fence with mountains in the background but manage to get everything in focus. I explained to him that this was simply done by manipulating the depth of field.

 More after the jump...

There are actually a few ways to get a picture like the one my uncle described and one way, like the image above, is by cheating. Okay, it's not really considered cheating. This is actually a composite image. A composite is simply an image made up of two or more elements from multiple images. In other words, the golf ball was added to another existing picture. This gives me a large depth of field because I used two pictures that were already in focus. I didn't have to worry about using camera settings  to cover a wide depth of field. This worked well in this situation because I didn't actually have to hit golf balls at my camera equipment.

The other way to get a deep DoF is by using camera settings. Using a small aperture will achieve this goal. If you play around with DoF you will soon find that your focus area begins before the point where your camera is focused and ends at an area behind the point of focus. In other words if you use a small aperture and focus on a fence, the grass in front of the fence will be in focus as well as the trees behind the fence. How do you optimize this effect? As a general rule I will focus about one third of the way past the closest point I want to be in focus. In most cases I end up with a well focused shot. However, the closer you get to your subject the more narrow your depth of field, so, this method doesn't always work when shooting in close. You'll just have to play around until you find the optimum setting. Personally, I take multiple shots to ensure that I end up with the image that I want.

You can also use a wide aperture to narrow your depth of field such as in the example to the left. This will allow a small area to be in focus, drawing attention to the focused subject by throwing everything else out of focus.

You can achieve many DoF effects by using camera settings or by manipulating images using software. Both can be used effectively. There are many indepth tutorials on the Internet that can teach you more than the small taste you have gotten here. Just remember that depth of field can be your friend, it can be your confidant, your right hand man, your caterer, your auto mechanic, your hairdresser... oh who are we kidding? Just go learn more about it, okay?

More to come...