14. Depth of field

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14. DEPTH OF FIELD

WITH LARGE APERTURES (low numbers, e.g., f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8) you can expect a shallow depth of field. This shallow depth of field will result in a photo that has one area in focus, and regions in front of and behind it that are out of focus with an increasing level of blur the farther they are from the point of focus. At the opposite end of the spectrum, small aperture openings, like f/11, f/16, and f/22, will create images with large depth of field, showing much of the scene in focus.

Depth of Field Is Relative

Depth of field can be a bit tricky to estimate because it’s controlled not only by your aperture setting, but also by the focal length of the lens and the focusing distance.

Focal Length Controls Depth of Field

The focal length of a lens will affect the amount of depth of field exhibited at a given aperture. Wide lenses tend to have great depth of field. Telephoto lenses tend to have shallow depth of field. Using an aperture of f/5.6 will result in great depth of field with a wide lens, whereas it will be quite shallow when used with a telephoto lens.

Focusing Distance Controls Depth of Field

The distance that your lens is focused at will also impact the depth of field. Focusing on a subject far away will result in an image with lots of depth of field. Focus at a close distance and your image will result in very shallow depth of field. This can readily be seen with a macro lens or any lens that can focus on subjects at very close range.

Try it out: Set your lens to focus on an object two feet away (0.6 meters) and you’ll likely notice that your scene has very shallow depth of field. Use that same lens to focus on something far away, and you will see greater depth of field.

14.1 Depth of field depends on a number of factors. The easiest of these factors to control is the size of the aperture. This series of images shows how results change by adjusting the aperture setting.