While enough has been said about the topic, here are a few quick notes:
- DOF = Depth of Focus, a term used to indicate how much of your image is in focus.
- bokeh = Often used alongside DOF – indicates how smooth the out-of-focus areas are in your image. Better lenses offer “creamier” bokeh – This is important because they offer good separation (read as 3-D) between whats in focus and whats not.
- Longer focal length lenses (telephoto) offers better bokeh than wider lenses.
- Given an aperture – say f4, the farther you are from the subject, the bigger the DOF. As you get closer to the subject – the shallower it gets.
- Its is for this reason that you can shoot basketball events (subject at a far distance) with wide apertures (as much as f1.4) and still get good sharp pictures of your subjects.
- It is for this reason that as you get closer to your subject (macro distances) you will need to reduce the apertures to f16 or higher to get even a decent (about an inch) DOF. Using regular apertures for such macro subjects (f4-f16) will otherwise result in paper thin DOF.
- Larger the aperture, the better the bokeh, and shallower the DOF and more expensive the lens.
- All lenses perform best at their optimal aperture of f8.
- No body uses (at least in the 35mm film and DSLRs) apertures higher than f22 – even for nature/landscapes.
- Use the biggest best aperture possible for portaits (f1.4 – f4).
- The inifinity mark on your lens gives you a DOF from inifnity to some point ahead of your camera – There always is a distance between this point and your camera thats not in focus. The fact that you want this gap to be in focus or not – can be controlled by where you focus – by a technique called “hyperfocal” focus.
- Instead of wasting the great sharp focus at infinity (which is really really tiny and too far for your eyes to see), why not move it up to include the “gap”? Google for hyperfocal and you will learn something new.
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