Depth of Field in your photos

I decided to mess around tonight with depth of field (DOF) with shots of my favorite coral. All were taken with my Canon 7D, EF 50mm f/1.4 lens at 1600ISO. I was about 4 feet from the coral.

This one is at f/1.4 and 1/5000 second shutter speed


Notice the narrow plane of focus and how the in focus area stands out from the scene. This is a good way to isolate a subject and bring it to everyones attention.

This one is at f/4.5 and 1/500 second shutter speed


You can see more is in focus but not all of the coral. You will notice the in focus areas stand out but not as noticeably.

This one is at f/8 and 1/160 sec shutter speed


On this one you see almost all of the coral is in focus and that it does not stand out much at all.

Your DOF will vary depending on the focal length and distance from your subject. The closer you are the less DOF and conversely the farther away the greater the DOF. Shorter focal lengths give a deeper DOF and longer focal lengths a narrower one. My camera is a crop sensor camera and has a deeper DOF than a full frame camera at the same settings. Most mirrorless and point and shoot cameras have even smaller sensor than crop sensor cameras causing their DOF to be even deeper at the same settings.

Here is a good site to get an idea of what your DOF will be with your camera, lenses, f stop settings and distance from subject.

Experiment and have fun taking pictures of your tank and its inhabitants.

 

In the first image you have the chromis near the coral, in front and in back of the coral, they seem to add more depth. Your eye is comparing distance naturally. I enjoy the first image the most, and the coral Stylo looks almost 3d.

Very neat, I will have to give this a try. Thank you for tips and instruction I will try it.

 

You're welcome Cheryl. I like to use a wider aperture, smaller f stop or narrower DOF, when taking shots of fish. I try to use larger f stops or greater DOF which is a smaller aperture for tank FTS and partial tank shots. I think using whatever f stop that gets your coral in view as you want is the way to go.

Using a wider aperture will allow you to shorten you shutter speed which will allow you to freeze the motion of your fish better and help eliminate fuzzy shots of them.

 

Really cool shots!

Sexy coral too!

 

Thanks for the tips!

Now I need to break out the manual and figure out how to make these changes.

 

You're welcome

 

Very cool! Thanks for posting.

I wonder if you can do this with all point and shoots

 

You can sort of if it has a variable aperture and a manual setting. I believe the less expensive models have less ability to do this but am not certain.

 

Nice pics out there..do post new ones with some fishes in it.

 

It'll also help if you move closer to your subject (especially at f/1.4).