DOF

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firoz

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Hi all,

I was wondering if anybody can help me with DOF. I understand it, and how it works but I always find myself thinking "is this the correct f number for this shot".

I always like shooting with a low f number (1.8) but find if I want to take pictures of a couple of people or need to bring more focus into the picture I struggle to figure out what I need to set my aperture at.

I'm sure it will start coming with practice but to get going It would be helpful to figure out how to judge this and what sort of things I need to think about.

Thank you.
 
I'm sure that you know that a low f number like f1.4 gives less DoF than a higher number like f8 and I'm pretty sure that you'll know that other things matter too like the camera to subject distance (generally the closer your camera is to the subject the shallower the DoF will look,) the size of your subject and the other things in the frame (when objects are small in the frame they tend to look sharper and give the impression of having more DoF) and the distance between all these things.

The great news is that with digital it costs next to nothing to fire off a load of shots at different settings with different zoom lengths, camera to subject distances and pictorial compositions and just experiment. Reading theory and the opinion of others is all well and good but once you've experimented for yourself I'm pretty sure that things will be a lot clearer.
 
If your camera has it, press the DOF button to get a preview of what it looks like, the viewfinder will go darker as the camera stops down the aperture, but you can then see the DOF you will have.
 
Firoz.. one thread is generally enough for the same question (link).. ;)
 
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