Low depth of field was used in creating this image to put the little girl out of focus; notice the dramatic feelings that are captured.
The last important frontier that you need to understand for proper composition is called depth of field. Depth of field refers to the region of proper focus that is available to you in any photographic image.
When you focus your camera, you don’t get a paper-thin region of proper focus in an image; instead, there’s some distance in front of and behind your subject that will also be in focus. This entire region of sharp focus is called the depth of field, or sometimes it is known as the depth of focus.
What determines depth of field? There are three factors which contribute to the depth of field that is available for you in any picture you plan to take. Let’s take a look at these factors one at a time, and then we will combine them.
Depth Of Field Illustration
Aperture – The aperture of your lens is the first major factor that influences depth of field. It’s the size of the lens opening that determines how much light reaches your cameras imaging sensor. Aperture is measured in f-stops, where lower f-stop numbers represent bigger openings and higher f-stop numbers represent smaller openings. In addition, the smaller the aperture’s actual opening, or in other words, the higher the f-stop number, the greater the depth of field will be. As you can see in the illustration to the right, the aperture of your lens directly influences how deep the depth of field is in any given picture.
Focal length- Focal length is just a measure of your lens’s ability to magnify a scene. And while most people focus on a lens’s magnification, depth of field plays an important role here as well. In simple terms, the more you magnify your subject, the less depth of field you will have available. When shooting with a normal or wide-angle lens, you will have a lot of depth of field. However, if you zoom out using telephoto magnification, your depth of field will drop dramatically. Likewise, macro photography, also known as close-up photography, has very little depth of field as you are greatly magnifying a very small object.
Subject distance- Last, but not least, your distance from the subject determines how much depth of field you can get in your scene. If you photograph a subject that is far way, the depth of field will be much greater than it is for a subject that is close to the camera. In practical terms, that means the region of sharp focus for a macro-shot (where the subject is only a few inches away from the camera) is extremely narrow, and you need to focus very, very precisely.
If you’re photographing something far way (like a distant horizon) a vast region in front of and behind the image will be in sharp focus. As you can imagine, these three factors- aperture, depth of field, and subject distance – work together in any shooting situation..Specifically, suppose you try to take a picture with an aperture of f/5.6. At a given distance from your child, and at a given focal length, that f-stop will yield a certain depth of field. But what happens if you change the other two factors. If you get closer to the child, such as if you walk towards the child, or if you increase the focal length by zooming in, the depth of field will decrease.
So what is the point of all of this? Why do you care about depth of field at all? The answer is that depth of field is an extremely important element in the overall composition of your photographs. Using depth of field, you can isolate your child by making sure your child is the only sharply focused person in the frame. My recommended lens to do this with is the Canon EF 24-105 f/4L zoom lens
A Shallow Depth Of Field Will Make A More Dramatic Picture. . .
Alternately, you can increase depth of field to make the entire image from foreground to background as sharp as possible.The real point here is to consider depth of field photography and use depth of field applications when taking photographs of your children. Especially try using a shallow depth of field (like the one in the picture at the top of this post) when taking your pictures of kids. It will create more interesting photographs, and make visitors and family alike want to see more and more images that you have taken of your child.
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Remember, keep taking lots and lots of photographs of your kids. You will be glad you did!
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About Betty Muscott
Betty A. Muscott is an experienced child photographer and online entrepreneur for tools to capture great photographs of children by parents and grandparents. Connect with Betty on Google+
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[...] Many parents and grand parents are not even aware that the pictures that they are taking of their toddlers can go from a “great” picture to an absolutely “stunning” picture by just learning to work with low depth of field when they are photographing the little ones! Sometimes this is also called shallow depth of field. [...]