So in my community college photography class, I’m supposed to be learning how to control depth of field by adjusting shutter aperture (f-stop) and speed. Depth of field, we’re told, is the range of distance within the subject that is acceptably sharp. The higher the f-stop, the longer the range of focus; the lower the shorter. Just to make things confusing, higher f-stop numbers equal smaller shutter apertures, and vice-versa.
We spent the morning at an outdoor African market, taking photos of pretty things at different depths of field:
The idea’s that in the upper photo both the close and more distant objects will be in focus; in the lower photo, only the close objects.
I dunno, I’m not seeing it so much, perhaps because I’m using a point & shoot digital camera with a limited shutter aperture range (2.8 to 8.0). The other students in my class are using fancy-ass digital SLRs with more range; perhaps depth of field will show up better in their homework photos.
Oops, I take that back. If you click on the photos, then click again, they’ll blow up and you can see the difference. Hot damn, I’m now a master of depth of field, an American sensei of still photography. Tremble in my presence, minions!