Thursday, June 4, 2009

Depth of Field

It is amazing what depth-of-field will do for a photograph. The above photograph's background is not sharp but it is still clear enough to determine what is there. In my opinion, the photograph appears cluttered - though it background does add some vibrant colors.

This photograph, however, is stronger and even has a more artistic flare. The focus is solely on the yellow daisy and the depth of field is more muted. It doesn't compete against the subject. Thoughts?

1 comment:

Gwendolyn said...

Totally agree - shallow DOF is where it's at! My 50mm lens lives at aperture 1.8. If you've got a light source behind the object you're focused on you can get some truely fascinating bokeh, which I think adds significantly to the image. I've, in fact, had bokeh I thought was more interesting than the subject!

I have to really struggle to convince myself to stop it down to something reasonable when I occasionally have a broader scene I'm trying to capture. I don't really have a good eye for landscape shots.

The frustrating thing about a wide open ap is that it is very very easy to mis-focus ever so slightly, and it's hard to catch until you have the image on the computer.