I had been waiting to put this up until I had the new blog launched. Since it seems I can't even get my website up, who knows when I shall grace the interwebs with my new concept? A very special thank you to Kate for taking the time to create this WONDERFUL tutorial. To preface this tute, I have been telling anyone who will listen that the kit lens that usually comes with new DSLR cameras is useless, buy the camera body and get a nifty 50 until you feel comfortable with the camera then you can invest in another lens was my motto. One of the reasons I said this was because so many people wanted that 'pro' look of a focused object and blurry background. I didn't think it was possible to achieve with the kit lens, Kate showed me that I was dead wrong...
Kate Paneros – A French Safari
The Basics
I think my favourite part of owning a digital SLR is being able to play with depth of field (DOF). My 3 megapixel point-n-shoot just never gave enough control, not that I would have known what to do if it did! That being said, a DSLR body and lens won’t automatically create great shots – you still need to know what you’re doing. One misconception is that the kit lenses are a bit average, and that you need an expensive fast lens with huge apertures to get much depth. I was guilty of this, and always coveted a lens with an f-stop under 2. They were out of my purchasing power, so instead I worked with what I had. First things first – know your kit lens. Mine is a Canon EFS 18-55mm. I also have a 75mm-300mm zoom, part of the twin lens kit. I always wondered what the 18-55mm part meant, so I looked it up, and discovered that it represents the distance from the optical center of a lens to the digital camera sensor when the subject of the photo is in focus. Huh? Don’t worry. It’s not necessary to understand all the physics with photography, but just know that 18mm is a wide-angle, 75mm is a closer zoom, and you can get crazy with 300mm and far beyond... Food photography often uses a small depth of field, to blur out backgrounds and focus on the food itself. At the other end of the scale, landscape photography uses a large depth of field because we want the whole scene to be in focus. It is quite easy to achieve a deep field of focus, but the challenge of mastering DOF comes in the form of shallow fields, or getting lots of nice blur in your shots. The Important Things DOF is affected by three things: aperture, lens focal length and shooting distance. There are 3 general concepts you can master that will get you in control of DOF:
1. The larger the aperture, the smaller the depth of field. Here the focal length has been kept at 55mm, while the aperture has shifted from f22 to f5.6 – you can see the difference in background blur quite easily.
3. Experiment with distance. The f22 shot in the first example didn’t have much blur – compare that to this one, shot at 300mm. Move back from your subject and then zoom in to achieve bokeh at small apertures. Also, the further away your subject is from the background, the better the bokeh effect.
Combine all three and you can get some great depth of field!
