Group photos and wide apertures

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joescrivens

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I always was under the impression that when you are shooting groups you must account for this by increasing your aperture because the depth of field is too shallow - 2.8 and higher for 4 people.

Then in the audrey woulard thread we were commenting on how she shoots groups at 1.6 and still manages to get them in focus. I thought I'd try it this weekend and was surprised at how easy it is. Something I thought would be a real challenge became an absolute synch.

Normally I'd have gone to at least 2.8 for the shot below but I left it at 1.8 with my 85mm and looking at the dof charts it's simple to see how easy it worked. The subject distance was 7.27 so the dof was 70cm - thats more than enough for the line that my family were in walking along.

Just thought I'd share my experience for anyone else who thought the same as me about group shots but that should try out some wider apertures

IMG_4556.jpg
 
Thanks for this; it's something I've been wondering about myself as I shot a few groups recently with a shallow DOF recently, and on most of them the focus was just out on a couple of people in the group. Annoyingly so.
 
I must confess I'd not heard that before, but I suppose it's just one of those general rule of thumb things, as people in a group could easily not be on the same plain of focus.
 
treeman said:
I must confess I'd not heard that before, but I suppose it's just one of those general rule of thumb things, as people in a group could easily not be on the same plain of focus.
Click to expand...

It is one of those rule of thumb things, I think it's important to understand with groups that narrower apertures are only needed with groups that have depth, and it's easy to forget that if you don't think about it enough and don't shoot a lot of groups.
 
Furthermore, at this display size (tiny on my monitor) the DOF is even greater than the standard tables might suggest. The standard tables are usually geared towards a "standard" 10x8 print viewed from 12" away, or thereabouts. On my monitor your image is displaying at only 6x4 and I'm viewing from 22" away. That makes softness that much harder to notice.

Try this DOF calculator, which allows you to input print (or screen display) size and viewing distance as parameters....

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/DOF-calculator.htm

and you'll find the DOF is almost 3 metres for this image as viewed by me.
 
Whats suprising me in the picture is even the tree behind the man appears pretty much in focus too, so you could have had even more depth in the people has you have now. I wouldnt have thought that at 1.8
 
Thats also a very nice picture.

Its a great point you make - I fall into the trap of thinking a group = f5.6 or f8, but then I am normally much closer than you were so have less dof.
 
Thanks for sharing this Joe :cool: It's really helped me re-think something I had been trying to do :thumbs:
 
tdodd said:
Furthermore, at this display size (tiny on my monitor) the DOF is even greater than the standard tables might suggest. The standard tables are usually geared towards a "standard" 10x8 print viewed from 12" away, or thereabouts. On my monitor your image is displaying at only 6x4 and I'm viewing from 22" away. That makes softness that much harder to notice.

Try this DOF calculator, which allows you to input print (or screen display) size and viewing distance as parameters....

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/DOF-calculator.htm

and you'll find the DOF is almost 3 metres for this image as viewed by me.
Click to expand...

thanks tim, a very interesting point!
 
cambsno said:
Thats also a very nice picture.

Its a great point you make - I fall into the trap of thinking a group = f5.6 or f8, but then I am normally much closer than you were so have less dof.
Click to expand...

cheers, just wish i'd stepped left and missed the tree in the foreground on the right. i have quite a few others though. i took about 60 and i think 4 out of the set are out, all the rest are nailed and the extra light allowed some much higher shutters given the subjects were moving around
 
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