What is depth of field? How to set up to take the best photos?

Depth of field is a term that people in the photography profession or those who love this art cannot ignore. Find out what depth of field is with Tnhelearning.edu.vn? And how to set it up to get the best photo right away!

What is depth of field?

Depth of field, short for DOF ( Depth of field ) is a term to describe the sharp area of an image . In other words, depth of field is measured from the point of closest focus to the point of furthest focus of the image.

What does depth of field mean?

Depth of field is one of the techniques that help you get very creative photos , from blurring the background to showing details on the frame.

How to change the depth of field to take the best photos

To change the depth of field to get good photos, you need to know the factors that affect the depth of field – that is, the aperture, the focal length of the lens, the distance of the subject in the image and the size ( format) image sensor .

Aperture

The most common way to change depth of field is to adjust the aperture of the lens – which determines how much light passes through the lens and into the camera’s sensor.

• The narrower the aperture, the deeper the depth of field.
• The wider the aperture, the shallower the depth of field .

In a word, wide apertures (f/1.4, f/2,…) allow for a thinner area of focus , drawing more attention to the subject by blurring the background. While narrow apertures (f/8, f/11,…) keep the image more in focus .

Often when photographing landscapes, you will be advised to use a narrow (small) aperture to maintain sharpness from very close foreground elements to distant elements such as a horizon or a sunset.

Lens focal length

To change the depth of field, you can change the lens focal length , from wide angle to telephoto with the same aperture, even the same shooting angle and the same scene.

That’s also why when taking portraits , you can use a telephoto lens , and when you want to take landscape photos , choose a wide-angle lens .

Sensor size

We take out the iPhone XS to analyze it. Usually the iPhone’s lens has a wide aperture like f/1.8, which provides a shallow depth of field that makes the subject stand out from the background.

However, the landscape photos taken with the iPhone are still very beautiful, which must be taken with a narrow aperture. So, is it the phone’s sensor that affects the depth of field?

Now the phone uses a small sensor, and installs additional software to mimic the blurred background, altering the depth of field with a simple effect. Because if using a large sensor, a large lens is required, completely unsuitable for the phone size.

Distance of objects in the image

Moving on, take the iPhone XS above as an illustration. In many cases, when taking portraits with your phone, you will not get the photos you want because you are too close or too far away.

Whereas, depth of field is the most obvious area of the image. If the phone uses a wide aperture with a large sensor camera, the background is not blurred enough, and the subject image is not outstanding. However, if the subject is moved further away, the background (background) will appear softer without changing any of the shooting elements of the shooting device.

In short, if you want to change the depth of field to take good photos, you need to pay attention:

Hopefully the above sharing will help you understand what depth of field is and how to set it up to have the beautiful photos you want.