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Where does the depth of field start to drop off? Chances are, unless you had something in the very near foreground, you probably got pretty good depth of field all the way through the image. Open it up on your computer and zoom in to look at the details. Take a photograph of a larger scene such as a landscape. Select the widest aperture that your lens is capable of and zoom all the way out. If you need a demonstration of this principle, you can try it out with your dedicated digital camera. And a broad field of view, in turn, means that you will get pretty good depth of field even at very wide apertures. A short focal length-or wide angle-means that you have a very broad field of view when you use that camera. Why is that exactly? Your smartphone has a small lens with a very short focal length. So, that means by default you're shooting at a wide aperture and there isn’t anything you can do to change that.īut you may have noticed something else: even though you're shooting at that wide aperture you still get pretty good depth of field when you photograph something like a landscape. Now, manufacturers didn't just do this to be cruel-the reason why your camera has a fixed aperture is because it needs to have a very wide aperture in order to allow enough light to reach that tiny lens. That means you can't change the aperture even if you think the scene calls for it. Just about every smartphone available today has a fixed aperture. Low light situations require that wider aperture for different reasons-because you won't be able to get a well exposed image in low light unless you open that aperture up wide to allow more light to reach the image sensor. Fast shutter speeds let in less light, so you need a wider aperture to compensate. Now as you’ll see in a minute, there are other factors that contribute to how much depth of field you get in an image, but most of the time you’re going to want to start by changing the aperture.Īperture also makes a big difference when you're shooting in low light, or when you need to use a very fast shutter speed to freeze action. Generally speaking, narrow apertures are associated with broad depth of field, while wider apertures are associated with shallow depth of field.
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Similarly, if you select a smaller f-number such as f/4, you get a wider aperture. If you select a larger f-number such as f/22, you get a narrower aperture. On a typical camera, even a point and shoot camera, aperture is adjustable. Conversely, if you have an image (such as a landscape) that has broad depth of field, then everything is in focus, from the boulders in the foreground to the mountains in the distance. If it’s a portrait, your subject’s face might be in focus, but everything behind him will be softly blurred. When you have an image with shallow depth of field, that means that not much of the scene is tack-sharp. Now, in case you are a little shaky on the idea of depth of field, it’s really just a way of describing how much of a scene is in focus. This is useful not only because you may need to let in more light in lower light conditions, but also because you may want to control how much depth of field there is in your photo. A small or narrow aperture lets in a lot less light, while a large or wide aperture lets in more light. The size of that hole is what determines how much light can pass through. “Aperture” refers to the opening between your camera’s lens and the image sensor. Before we start discussing the aperture on your phone, you may find it helpful to do a short review about aperture and what it is, exactly.