Depth of Field For Fun

Most of the effort in this weeks column is going in this very important section of using depth of field for fun.  Most photographers never learn to control DOF and it really shows in their relatively boring and lackluster photography.  I’m going to concentrate on the many choices involving a single subject (the sunflower) and then show some of my choices and explain why I made them to produce the sample images.

Above you can see the same subject captured at different apertures, and the resulting DOFs achieved.  There really is no “right” way of selecting DOF, it’s purely a creative process of the composition.  Take a look at the bokeh (defocused background) of each of the three images.  Which one do you find more pleasing?  How much of the background do you want to remain recognizable?  Look at the center of the flower and notice how the seeds are more/less in focus depending on the aperture used.  The aperture for each example is marked in the lower left corner.

Now we’ll examine each shot more in detail.  With the larger image you can more clearly see the differences.  The above shot taken at F2.8 clearly exhibits a smoother bokeh and you really can’t tell what the background is.  The seed area is half in focus, half out.  The seeds in focus are sharp, but not super sharp.  Look at the leaves on the stalk, some are in focus, some not.

Above we can see how at F5.6 the bokeh is not as creamy and smooth and you can start to see what the background is.  The background actually appears “busier” because of the smaller aperture and increased DOF.  The seed area is certainly sharper, and more of it is in focus.  More of the leaves on the stalk are in focus as well.

Now you can tell the background is just green foliage and it starts to appear rough as it competes with the foreground subject (flower) for your eye.  At the same time the seed area is razor sharp as are the leaves on the stalk.  You can see the flower much more clearly and sharp than the version at F2.8, but at the expense of also seeing the background more clearly and losing that extra isolation a very shallow DOF provides.  Which version would you choose for display?

Bells are always fun shots, even more fun if you can get interesting light bouncing off of them and a decent exposure at the same time.  Adjust your DOF for a nice sharp center bell, and slightly defocus bells to the side and you start to get a fun and interesting effect.

How an anyone resist photographing a pretty little girl?  All smiles and she still has her baby teeth.  I adjusted the DOF to isolate her from the background, but not enough so you couldn’t tell there are trees behind her.  The sun is shining through the trees, the trunk behind her but the branches clearly overhead filtering the light as it splashed across her face.

These last two were a lot of fun, but probably more fun for the visitors to the butterfly exhibit watching a farang with a big camera chase the butterflies all over the place.  Ideally you’d capture butterflies and other insects with a macro lens which excels at magnifying small objects with a sharpness so fine normal (non-macro) lenses can rarely achieve.  You set up on a tripod, external shutter release, tie off all the branches so the wind doesn’t move them, and wait hours for a butterfly or insect to land in your frame.  All I had was a Canon 70-300 DO IS compact zoom on a Canon 5d body.  I handheld these shots, capturing the butterflies as they landed for a second or two and then took off again.  I took care to focus on the wings and to use a shallow DOF which also allowed for a much needed faster shutter speed.  By focusing on the butterfly wings they became sharp in the frame, and the shallow DOF nicely blurred everything else outwards.  I like this effect.  Out of about 50 images only 4-5 were actually in focus (those butterflies are very fast..;o)), and because it was a regular lens these images are just very small crops of the original, about 1/20^th of the entire frame.  I simply got the most enjoyment from the simple gear I was carrying without worrying about dragging along a bag of lenses.