Depth of field

Posted by Sara Gettys on Apr 9, 2011 | Comments Off

I was just editing some photos shot at a wind farm yesterday and came across a good example of depth-of-field. Since I’ve had many people ask me what it is, I thought I’d throw these up. The other day, looking for something different to spice up my tool bag, I pulled a 35mm, f2 out of the equipment locker and have carried it with me on the last couple of assignments. While this isn’t a lens that gives you an exceptionally shallow depth of field (I love my 50mm 1.4) it is a different look from our regular wide/medium lens, which is a 17-35mm 2.8. Anyway, without getting too technical about it, your f-stop (aperature) determines how much of you view is in focus, say, a finger’s width vs. the length of a school bus. This is what I got with the f 2.0:

Only the woman in the red coat is in focus. I immediately shot the scene with my regular wide angle, set at f9 and got this:

Now the woman in the red coat, the guy in the red coat and the people behind them are pretty much in focus. Depth of field is just another tool you can use in your pictures to zero in on a subject (like the first image) or be more inclusive (like the second). Neither is “better,” you just decide what communicates the information you want to communicate more effectively. I ended up choosing the first image because I like the kind of dreamy quality it has and the placement of the faces.