The Paranoid Agnostic

I find it difficult to get a short depth of field using my digital camera. On a normal (film) camera, I would choose a low f-stop (large aperature) to achieve a short depth of field. It turns out that digital cameras will produce a much larger depth of field for the same f-stop as a film camera. This is great news if you do landscape photography but bad news if you do portraits. There is however a way to achieve shorter depth of field using a digital camera.

The trick is to use a zoom lens and zoom in on your subject as much as possible. You may have to move further away from your subject to frame the shot they way you want, but you will now find that you can get a the background and/or foreground out of focus but your subject in focus.

Wikipedia explains Depth of field nicely. It refers to which objects will be in focus when you take your picture. A large depth of field means that objects close to you and objects far from you will be in focus. Short depth of field means that only objects a specific distance from you will be in focus.

Several people have written explainations of how digital cameras generally have larger depth of field than film cameras.

• Depth of field and your digital camera by J. Andrzej Wrotniak.
• Depth of Field and the Digital Domain by Bob Atkins
• Depth of Field – Digital Photography Tutorial by anonymous