Photographers, cinematographers, and overall content creators
can use lighting, composition
and motion to tell their story,
but in this quick video, I'm going to talk about
depth of field and how to use it to your advantage.
Hi, my name is Genaro, Senior Pro Market Specialist
for Canon USA,
and in this video I'm going to talk about
depth of field.
Now, within your images
you can have a shallow depth of field
or a deep depth of field.
Now exactly what is depth of field?
It is the area within an image that is sharp or in focus.
Now how can you control that depth of field?
By knowing how to control your aperture,
and your focal length.
Let's first talk about aperture,
which is the opening of the lens.
The aperture controls two things in your photographs.
The amount of light it lets in, your exposure,
and how much of your image will in focus, your depth of field.
The aperture is rated in F-stops.
The larger the F-stop number, the smaller the opening.
For depth of field though, small apertures give you
a shallow depth of field,
while larger apertures create a wider depth of field.
The second variable that can affect your depth of field
is your focal length.
Are you using a wide angle lens or a telephoto lens?
In this example,
we are going to use the RF 24-70mm F2.8 lens at F4.
You can see that the video taken at 24mm has a sharper background
than that of the one taken at 70mm.
Both the shots were taken at F4, but the 70mm shot
has a shallower depth of field.
So wide angle lenses can offer a greater depth of field.
And longer telephoto lenses can
offer a shallower depth of field.
Now most people think you should always shoot
with a shallow depth of field,
but for a cityscape photograph like this,
it looks great,
but you can really see any details
in the buildings themselves,
but there will be moments where having the shallow depth
of field will give you the look you're trying to achieve.
In this setup, you can clearly see
all of these hanging LED lights around me,
and there's nothing special at all with this image.
But once we start utilizing a shallower depth of field,
Suddenly, the image has a completely different look.
Now, here are two pro tips on knowing how to decide
what size depth of field you will need for your images.
Pro tip number one.
What is your background?
Do you want to reveal the entire scene to the audience?
Images, like landscapes, are a great example
of the use of a deep depth of field.
Or are you stuck at a place with a terrible background?
Hence, a shallow depth of the field
will help get rid of any unwanted distractions.
Pro tip #2
Just how deep is your subject?
And I'm not talking
about an emotional or thought provoking question.
I'm talking about actual measurements.
Just how big is the thing you're about to take a picture of?
For example,
let's take a product shot of this randomly selected
digital camera.
A rookie mistake would be to just focus
on the cameras brand name and shoot it with a wide aperture,
but if my job was to show the entire camera kit,
this image won't work.
I would need to measure the depth of the camera and lens
and use that information to help capture the right
amount of depth of field I need to have the entire camera
and lens in focus.
Now before I scare you off with measurements and math,
there are plenty of depth of field calculator
apps out there to assist you.
All you need is to enter what camera and lens
you're using, the distance to, the subject, aperture settings,
and the calculator will give youback the range
of your depth of field.
I hope this video was useful in helping you understand a bit
more about depth of field.
Now, if you enjoyed this video, don't forget to subscribe
to our YouTube channel
so that you can be notified when we post up our next
Canon Quick Tips.
Keep learning my friends.