Understanding Depth of Field

I get a lot of queries asking me how I blur the background in my images. First let me say that I don’t manipulate my images. There are some folks on the internet who do it regularly using photoshop…but in my case it’s mainly due to shallow depth of field by using a long tele lens and lower aperture number.

A lot of beginners feel that equipment is the main thing for good images. Not necessarily…though is plays an important role. The primary thing is understanding the key concepts of photography, which is as simple as understanding the exposure triangle: the combination of ISO, aperture and shutter speed and what kind of impact they have on images.

Depth of field is dependent on 3 factors – Focal Length, Camera to Subject Distance and Aperture.

Longer focal length gives shallow depth of field and a wide angle lens gives you larger depth of field.
If the subject is closer to the camera, then you may get a shallow depth of field compared to when the subject is far from you.
The last factor is the aperture – a smaller f number (f2.8 etc) gives you smaller depth of field and large f number (f16, f22 etc) gives you larger depth of field…

These are foundation of photography and having a good understanding on these is important. It sounds simple, but trust me…I’ve seen a lot of beginners and amateurs get this wrong.

Canon 1DX + Canon EF 400mm f2.8 L IS II, ISO 2500, f2.8 @ 1/3200, Evaluative Metering -1 Stop, WB of 6200K.