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 Depth of field in photography Understanding depth of field in photography can be simple to understand in theory, but in practice is usually difficult to master. I must admit, I still mess up, most people think its as simple as shooting wide open, as much as your lens allows. But this is not necessarily the case.
Shooting wide open does not necessarily guarantee your subject to be sharp, there are many variables. Things such as distance from you and your subject, are you using a zoom lens and at what mm are you shooting?
A good example can be found in the picture on your left. I shot this using a Nikon 80-200mm AFD 2.8 lens at 155mm wide open at 2.8 with a shutter speed of 1/1000 sec. I don’t recall the distance I was from her, but if you click on the image and enlarge it, you will see that her nose is the sharpest point of the image. By shooting wide open at 2.8, the dept of field was too shallow to have all of her sharp in focus. Her face is sharp, but most of her hair, necklace and ears are not.
In this particular case a wide open 2.8 aperture setting was over kill in my opinion. Yes, its nice to have the ability to shoot at 2.8 at 155mm, but I could have shot it at 5.6 and still have blurred out the background since it was so far away. So you can see how its not how expensive a lens costs, but the ability of the photographer to produce good or better images. For this one, I believe it is a good picture, but could have been a lot better. Hope this sheds some light in understanding depth of field in photography for you. Happy shooting!
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 Head Shot - Camera setting at f/3.2 @ 1/160 sec and 112mm Following up on my last post regarding depth of field (DOF), I wanted to share a sample of a head shot where I used a wide open aperture setting to get the right look. In the image to the left, you can see how her eyes and the rest of her face is focused, but her hair, only an inch or so away (closer to me), is out of focus. The camera settings for this image were, f/3.2 at a 1/160 sec shutter speed using my 80-200mm 2.8 AFD lens. I shot it at 112mm, so I could get in close, I also cropped it a little on PS CS3.
In fact, its difficult to see, but the tip of her nose is a little out of focus, but that’s ok since my main focus was to highlight her eyes and lips. To get this image I took about 3-5 different shots. Several of them came out great, this is one of them.
My only complaint about the image is her makeup, its good, but her lips could have been made up a little better.
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 Photographed with a Nikon 2.8 80-200mm AFD lens Not sure if I shared this photo in the past, I probably did, either here or on my flickr account. At the time I wanted the model to stand out…I know, what you are thinking, she already was! But I wanted to blur out the background significantly, so I used my Nikon 80-200 2.8 lens and chose a large aperture setting.
The result was a nice backdrop with good bokeh. The only thing I didn’t like was the overexposed sunlight behind her and the partial cactus on her left. Oh well, I’ll be more careful next time. This was more of a fun casual shoot, so I wasn’t paying too much attention to small details. 
Have you tried playing around with depth of field with your lenses? Don’t think that you need an expensive lens to do it, not so. It can be achieved by most all lenses. It all has to do with the distance of the camera to the subject and the background. Actually, you can try it with the side of a building or table. Have someone or something be about 10-15 ft away from you, focus on the subject including the surroundings in your frame, and take several pictures with different aperture settings. Start with the widest setting (smallest f#) and work your way up.
You should get several good samples. Its a great way to learn about depth of field (DOF). By the way, you can also use a point n shoot camera, simply set it on manual mode and change the aperture number. Have fun!
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 Sample of bokeh in a picture. Recently I’ve seen many pictures of new photographers using online editing tools or home software to create the blur or better known as bokeh on their images. In a photo the area that is focused the best is usually the sharpest, bokeh is more like the opposite, its the area away from the most focused and is the “blur”. The term bokeh is used to describe the quality of the blur. The bokeh is normally a distance away from the area that is most at focus/sharpest, so each lens will create a different type of bokeh.
Many people rarely notice the bokeh, until they realize that its the lens that creates good bokeh. The blur can be recreated with a software, but its not the same as one created at the time the picture was taken with a real lens! Lately I’ve seen so many pictures on Modelmayhem where it’s obvious they are creating the bokeh or enhancing it with software.
 Bokeh what? Good bokeh is usually planned and can be created with many situations. In the image on the left, the background was much brighter than the subject, but I knew that if I blurred it correctly I would still be able to show that it was a lake with trees. Notice the bokeh on the trees, bushes and water. Its visible but does not take away from the main subject. Some may consider the small circular type of blur to be good bokeh, I tend to like whichever is more pleasing to the eye that it enhances the sharpest points of the image to be “good” bokeh.
Bokeh is most noticeable in images with areas that are bright or have some sort of highlight. In the image to the left, the lighter background allows us to view the bokeh better. But of course it happens in non “highlight” areas, for example the image on the right, because of the solid green color of the grass, the quality of the bokeh is more of a solid color. Using a larger aperture (2.8) I blurred the background significantly to the point that it resembled a backdrop. In the image on the left, I didn’t use a 2.8 setting, it was more in the range of 4-5.6. because of the distance and light.
So next time you’re getting ready to take that picture, take a pause and think about how you want your final image to look, take a risk and move your camera out of “P”rogram/”A”uto mode!
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 Headshot Before I continue, I want to announce that if you get my updates via email and want to continue getting them, you will need to sign up again. Sorry, but the subscription when I moved it from the old site to this one caused some problems and the only way I have been able to fix it is too start it from scratch. The old update will work for a day or two, but then if you don’t sign up again, then you will not receive email updates each time I update the blog. You can sign up on the upper right side of this page! Sorry about this, but I hope you will continue to follow the blog, I have some great updates planned for this coming year!
Back to the photo on the right, Laura a 19 yr old local model in my area, works occasionally as a promotional model for cars shows and events is a great and fun person. So whenever I photograph her, I make sure I get a good head shot of her smile, which she has one of the cutest smiles. If you notice how I focus on her face, from forehead to chin? Then make sure that the background, including her shoulders and anything behind her is blurred. Making sure you use the right camera settings and distance from her face is crucial to creating this look. I may use a wide open aperture, but depending on the lens and distance, it may be too much. So if you are trying this make sure you use your depth of field (DOP) button on your DSLR to preview how it will look. Or if you are using a point & shoot or a DSLR that does not have a DOP button, look at your preview screen, some may give you the same information.
 Sun for hair light Another good “trick” is to place the model in front of the rays of sun light so it creates a bright frame around her hair/head. I then try to shoot in an angle so I don’t get any sun flairs and I also use a hood for my camera lens. Again, I make sure to have the background be out of fucus so her face is the center of attention. In the photo on the right, Laura did have a few “crazy hairs” flying all over the place, so I had to remove them on Photoshop, but it was no big deal. I think the photos turned out fine!
I will say one thing, its easier to control the DOP with my Nikon DSLR than it is with my Canon Powershot G10. With my compact Canon, controlling the DOP takes a little more finesse but I am able to do it now fairly easily. But if I need to work quickly, nothing works better than a DSLR camera. So keep this in mind if you will be doing many of these type of photos. Understanding what type of camera I need for each shoot is important so I get the photos I want.
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