Quickly following my last article for Andrea on F stops, Brian from North Carolina wrote to ask about my casual mention of the term “Depth of Field”. Yes another totally unnecessary scary phrase with a simple explanation. Glad you asked Brian, I am happy to put this in simple terms.

“Old Dan” a Farmer friend of mine considers Depth of Field is about 12 inches or as deep as a furrow will go. I guess that is right for a farmer. For a photographer there is a different and simple meaning and no need to wear boots.

Depth of Field easy explained as “How much of the photograph is in focus”.

There done! A look at the two photographs above of orange slices save many words and show the effect I am talking about.

Both of the Orange slice photographs were taken from the same position with the same focus point the centre slice, this can be seen in the left photo with the fore and backgrounds way out of focus, blurred when the wide aperture like f2.8 is used.

The same focus point for the right hand photograph was used but this time the aperture was changes to as small as possible f16 this makes the fore and background sharper.

Now you can see the difference and with this knowledge can now manipulate a photograph to the best effect and have lots of fun being creative, with that now non scary phrase “Depth of Field”. This principle is good for every aspect of photography not just close ups, try using it on portraits, trees in the far distance background can have a great mottled out of focus effect projecting your subject forward

More to follow and all your questions will be answered just email me via the “Contact the Letterman” link .

Remember …. You are only limited by your imagination, go out there experiments you can always erase the bad ones, most of all have fun.

Old Farmer Dan's Depth of Field.