Experimenting with Depth of Field

2009 November 30


This tutorial is based on one photograph taken at different aperture settings. It allowed to demonstrate how Depth of Field really works.

In order to practice with depth of field try finding something in line to photograph. It can be tennis or golf balls, concrete paving, a fence or anything similar.

The equipment that was used to take these photos is: a tripod (see how to use a tripod) and a cable release because longer shutter speeds were involved; and a Canon 250d camera. The ISO was set to 100.

A series of photos of the same fence, shot at different aperture shows how the depth of field increases as does the area in focus.

At aperture f4.5 the area in focus is only one or two inches and you see the background is completely blurred. As you increase the aperture, more and more becomes in focus and shutter speed gets longer.

It is a combination of ISO, shutter speed and aperture that makes an exposure of your image. These parameters correlate with each other, which means that if you leave your ISO fixed to 100 and increase aperture from 4.5 to 32, your shutter speed will be increased too.

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1 Comment for Experimenting with Depth of Field leave one →
2010 January 28
Eva G permalink

Thank you for a helpful video. I recently have purchased my first slr digital camera, which I have wanted for a very long time, but know very little about how to properly use it. This video really helped me to understand about focusing and DOF. I have been playing with these settings on my camera, but did not really know what they meant. You did a fantastic job with making it very easy to understand and very informative. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and time. Keep them coming!

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