Photography Hints & Tips

Depth of Field

Depth of field has several usages, however the two main usages are as follows:

To show the focus in a picture from near to far a large depth of field is used. This would be the ideal setting for a landscape image, whilst using a shallow depth of field to minimse the focus and blur the background or part of the subject is often suited to wildlife photography to draw the attention on to your subject, not the foreground or background.

So how do you get this on your camera?

Depth of field is primarily controlled by the Apeture you set your lens or camera to. In very basis terms, if the apeture is set to F2.8 then the depth of field at a given distance would be much shallower than the same image taken at F22.

All digital SLR cameras allow you to set the required apeture and some digital compacts allow this as well.
In general terms, using your camera in a fully automatic mode will cover the point and shoot needs of most people. Almost all compact digital cameras have a landscape mode option. By using this option the camera will automaiticaly set the camera's apeture to its largest value which will minimse the amount of light reaching the sensor and in turn produces an image with greater depth of field.
However, when you want to control what you see in the foregroung or background, try using the apeture priority mode setting or manual mode on your camera to see the affects.