May 11, 2019 - "DOF" You all know what that is? - Right? - Oh my, read on anyway.

Two links have been updated today (click in left-hand column): “Jim’s Ramblings” and “Photo shoot images” by Gary Wittstock. After you look at them come back and read on.

You noticed that Gary talked of DOF – that prompted me to say, the art of photography is knowing what you want your photograph to look like. Most likely it is not a view of reality – not a view as your eye saw it – it is a view that you think is pleasing to the mind of the viewer – in short it is art.

Well, DoF in photography stands for “Depth of Field” and it helps you make your photo truly your statement of your art of photography.

So which one the following two images is most pleasing to your mind – you the viewer?

The difference is depth of field (DoF).

Depth of field (DoF) is the distance between the nearest and furthest elements in a scene that appear to be “acceptably sharp” in an image. The distance between the camera and the first element that is considered to be acceptably sharp is called DoF “near limit.”

Three main factors that will affect how you control the depth of field of your images are: aperture (f-stop), distance from the subject to the camera, and focal length of the lens on your camera.

A large aperture gives a shallow depth of field (top). A small aperture gives greater depth of field (bottom).

But there is more to it than that: As sensor size increases, the depth of field will decrease for a given aperture (when filling the frame with a subject of the same size and distance). This is because larger sensors require one to get closer to their subject, or to use a longer focal length in order to fill the frame with that subject.

But for now let us think only about what we want th depth of field to be in the photos we take (or make). Before we study how to control depth we must know why we want to control it.

TGO Photo Club members – tell us what you want in our” Education” and our “Birds of a Feather” sessions this fall – if DoF is your want, I am sure we can find someone to educate us.