Photography Tips (5)

SIMPLE PHOTOGRAPHY

Simple tips on the basics of photography by Trevor James @ www.trevorjamesphotography.com

Firstly I wish to apologise for the delay in uploading this blog. There have been some difficulties over the last few days with telephone and broadband communications and this has caused a breakdown in connections.


Well, did any of you get out there before the snow came along to grab some shots and practice, or did you know we were going to get snow and decided to wait a few days? Did any of you guys try using your flash outdoor in the dark to see what affect it would have? It doesn't do mush really does it? You'd be better trying a slow shutter speed and large depth of field whilst using a tripod. This kind of nicely brings me to this week's blog on 'Depth of Field' and what it is.

I guess you can't really do much on this topic without discussing aperture s well, so here we kind of expand a bit on Aperture Priority somewhat - it's all in the name of learning!

Depth of Field (DOF) is that amount of your shot that will be in focus. Large depth of field means that most of your image will be in focus whether it’s close to your camera or far away (like the picture to the left where both the foreground and background are largely in focus – taken with an aperture of f/22. The focal length was 28mm).

Small (or shallow) depth of field means that only part of the image will be in focus and the rest will be fuzzy (like this picture on the right where you will see the closest snow-covered apple is sharp and yet the remainder of the image is all blurred out). This is a very shallow depth of field and was taken with an aperture of f/5.6 and a focal length of 135mm).

Aperture has a big impact upon depth of field. Large aperture (remember it’s a smaller number) will decrease depth of field while small aperture (larger numbers) will give you larger depth of field.

It can be a little confusing at first but the way I remember it is that small numbers mean small DOF and large numbers mean large DOF. Let me highlight this with two pictures I took earlier this week. 


The first picture on the left was taken with an aperture of f/22 and the second one was taken with an aperture of f/2.8. The difference is quite obvious. The f/22 picture has both the flower and the bud in focus and you’re able to make out the shape of the fence and leaves in the background.

The photo on the right taken with an aperture of f/2.8 shot has the left flower in focus (or parts of it) but the depth of field is very shallow and the background is thrown out of focus and the bud to the right of the flower is also less in focus due to it being slightly further away from the camera when the shot was taken.

The best way to get your head around aperture is to get your camera out and do some experimenting. Go outside and find a spot where you’ve got items close to you as well as far away and take a series of shots with different aperture settings from the smallest setting to the largest. You’ll quickly see the impact that it can have and the usefulness of being able to control aperture.

Some styles of photography require large depths of field (and small Apertures)

For example in most landscape photography you’ll see small aperture settings (large numbers) selected by photographers. This ensures that from the foreground to the horizon is relatively in focus.

On the other hand in portrait photography it can be very handy to have your subject perfectly in focus but to have a nice blurry background in order to ensure that your subject is the main focal point and that other elements in the shot are not distracting. In this case you’d choose a large aperture (small number) to ensure a shallow depth of field.

Macro photographers tend to be big users of large apertures to ensure that the element of their subject that they are focusing in on totally captures the attention of the viewer of their images while the rest of the image is completely thrown out of focus.

If you are still snow-covered in many areas where you live go out and grab some shots playing around with your aperture dial and experiment with your 'Depth of Field'. Don't forget your tripod!

Next week we will be looking a little closer at Shutter Speed