Depth Of Field - Aperture

Depth of Field

This is what gets most people excited about DSLR and also the portrait mode in most cell phones. Background blur!!

Deep Depth of Field. Everything in focus. High f number.

Depth of field ranges from Shallow to Deep.

In a Shallow depth of field the foreground and the background are blurred. Only a small area of the image is in focus.

So if the focus was on something closer to you everything in the background gets blurred and if focus was on the back then everything towards you is out of focus.

For example in this image everything behind the squirrel is blurred.

Background blur. Shallow Depth of Field

Shallow Depth of Field. Background Blur

Now in this next image you can see part of the enclosure this bird was kept at. Please ignore the motion blur caused by rapid movement of the bird.

Cage is visible

In this picture the focus was  manually set at the bird and because I was close enough to the enclosure the cage cannot be seen. It's just that the cage was blurred to a point where we could not see it.

Deep Depth of Field. Foreground blur

Cage not visible

              Try this trick when you're at a zoo next, it will seem as if you were out in the wild!

Basically with aperture wide open you get a shallow depth of field. Only the image you want to focus on will be clear and everything else in the foreground and background will be blur. 

Deep Depth of Field. Foreground and Background blur.

3. Bokeh

Now you've learnt that wide open apertures will help you blur some parts of the image. When you blur a part of the image which has lights or objects reflecting light you will create bokeh.

Bokeh is basically a blurred out object which appears to be glowing. Normally lights. 

Bokeh created by blurring of stars.

The glowing circular objects are bokeh. 

The size of your aperture will determine the shape of the bokeh. More on that I will be writing on a later date. 


#bokeh #dof #depthoffield #shallow #deep #backgoundblur #imageblur #foregroundblur #kunal #kunalmishra #nikon