Experimenting with Depth of Field

This tutorial is based on one photograph taken at different aperture settings. It allowed to demonstrate how Depth of Field really works.

In order to practice with depth of field try finding something in line to photograph. It can be tennis or golf balls, concrete paving, a fence or anything similar.

The equipment that was used to take these photos is: a tripod (see how to use a tripod) and a cable release because longer shutter speeds were involved; and a Canon 250d camera. The ISO was set to 100.

A series of photos of the same fence, shot at different aperture shows how the depth of field increases as does the area in focus.

At aperture f4.5 the area in focus is only one or two inches and you see the background is completely blurred. As you increase the aperture, more and more becomes in focus and shutter speed gets longer.

It is a combination of ISO, shutter speed and aperture that makes an exposure of your image. These parameters correlate with each other, which means that if you leave your ISO fixed to 100 and increase aperture from 4.5 to 32, your shutter speed will be increased too.