Hey this is Daniel Norton, I'm here in my
studio in New York City with Erica and
today I want to talk a little depth of
field. there's a there's been a lot of
discussion about this..
People ask me questions like why you
said do certain death of
field at certain places... and I want to
talk very specifically in this case
about shooting kind of in a studio
versus let's say location... but kind of
the, the topics are.. you know the, the
reasons are kind of the same... it just
varies slightly depending on where you are...
and the main reason that you change your
depth of field is clearly to get things more
or less out of focus.
If I'm shooting in a studio though and
I'm have a plain background, like in this
case... I had this great background.
I don't care if it's in or out of focus
because it's a plain background right?
What I do care about...
if I'm making a portrait or a
big shot is that Erica is in focus, so
yeah, I can use autofocus, and I can use a
fast lens, and get like.. just her eyes
sharp, but if she's moving and I'm
interacting with her like I often do
when I'm making a portrait, there's a
chance we're gonna get more kind of
out-of-focus pictures or she moves
really quickly... she might go out of the
range, so giving myself a little bit
extra depth of field is gonna help.
so I usually shoot somewhere around f/8 when
I'm in the studio...
Another kind of bonus to that in this
studio cuz daylight
studio is by shooting at f/8,
I can eliminate all the the window light
without too much trouble, we will
actually use high-speed sync in a minute too.
I'm gonna give you both examples but
that's kind of the reasons why I start
there in most cases...
So let's take a shot like I normally would
do so I have my
Profoto here with the three foot octa
this is a B1X.
I've got the Nikon Z6
the 85mm of the pics.. to it... I do
have an A1 one on top of my camera, this
is just being used as a transmitter.
I'm not using as a flash... so I'm at 200 of a
second at f/8.
I'm in TTL... so I'm gonna
frame it up... actually I'm gonna have you
come slightly this way... good, there we go
good... well I should point out there's a
light in the background as well, you
guys probably se it over there.... that light
is giving her a slight hair light,
so we come in here, and we can see at f/8 you
know nice crispy eyes... but if you look,
her whole body is... you know her hair,
everything is gonna be nice and sharp, right?
Nice good depth there... and it looks
good, you know, this is kind of how I like
to shoot if she was moving around, so we
can shoot a couple, or if I'm not exactly
right you know then we can always keep
her in focus without too much work.. right?
And because I'm eliminating the lighting
space I don't have to
worry too much about you know...
any movement of her right...
Nice and easy just like
that.... okay now if we switch...
so I'm gonna
go to f/2 well first thing is if I just
go to f/2 and I'm in TTL so... okay we'll
see if the light goes down low enough...
without going into high-speed sync... try
to start there.
So I'm at f/2 at 200 of a second...
okay so we can see right away a
couple of things, we're picking up some
light in the room, so we're getting the
background lit up which I guess is an
advantage if you want that... you know and
you can actually see already there like
I've missed focus slightly at f/2.
I'm sure it's focused somewhere yeah there...
it is, so let's try again, that was
probably more me than anything else,
there we go... so we're here... now she's
sharp on her eye, but you see how quickly
it falls off.
Now if you like it this look...
more power to you right?
But the problem is is you saw in that very first
frame that I shot is.. if she even moves a
hair, you move a little bit with the camera
after you focus... it's gonna be out of
focus, so I don't like typically to do
this unless I have to.
Now what I would do though...
cuz I want control right is,
they do have something called high-speed
sync... so we'll talk about that very
briefly, what that essentially does is
allows the flash to shoot above the
normal sync speed.
So if I do a little math... somewhere around
2,000th of a second will put us
back where we were... like math wise,
So 2,000 of a second at f/2 is gonna get the
background dark again...
Again with only our light affecting it,
so we're not gonna have any chance of
any motion blur.
and again she's sharp, but it falls off
really quickly at f/2.
So let's shoot a couple like this,
this can be really nice like I said,
but probably more for a posed slower
movements, that we should...
we're always sure she's in focus, you
know, a little slower of the shoot, maybe
look like a more practiced model that
kind of stuff.
That'll work really nice for you, right?
And you can certainly do that.
Took a look here again...
you know we're able to
do it cuz she was moving slower...
and Erica of courses she's done this
before a couple times... okay but why would I
shoot that f/2 without it..
forget about the rest of it, if there was
something in the background that I
didn't want to be in focus, so I actually
have back here surprisingly almost like
we planned it.
I have back here behind the paper,
I've got some lighting equipment,
so let's let's start off where we did
before, we're gonna go to f/8 at 200
second, and we're gonna make a similar shot.
Now I've got the lighting in the
background, now a couple things are gonna
happen here...
number one, it's kind of dark back there
and muddy, and doesn't look that good right?
And number two, they're kind of
sharp right?
Not super sharp, but they're
they're very sharp, like we can kind of
see what's back there,
to me that's super distracting right?
So here's what we want to use our depth
of field but now I'm not gonna worry too
much about high-speed sync yet... anyways
I'm gonna just dial down to f/2 this is
gonna allow me to let some of the light
from the windows bleed in, and it's gonna
allow me to knock this cleanly out of
focus.
Right now this looks a lot better,
because they're not these big solid
blocks behind her head right,
Now if you wanted them to be lit differently..
clearly you could throw a light on them,
but for our purposes we'll just do this...
and I think I might actually shoot
horizontal for this.... I'm
coming in nice and close.... and
that stand's in the shot... so I'm gonna
actually change my composition slightly,
to go over here again.
I'm still a TTL this is actually one of the
great things about TTL's... we can change
things up really nicely and quickly...
and not have to worry too much about,
yeah about it.
Good, nice and simple you know, and that's
kind of an extreme case, but you can see
why you'd want to use a wide open
aperture versus a close down one, right.
Wide open aperture is gonna give us,
it's gonna give us, you know the
shallow depth of field, so if there's
stuff in the background we don't want to
see... we want to knock it out, it could be
your on the street, there's people back
there you don't want to see.
It could be... you know... anything,
in this case this could be some art on the
wall or something weird,
you don't want to see it.
I just wanted to make color shape of it
make it really interesting... other times
you're gonna be someplace where you want
that stuff in focus, maybe you're doing a
landscape and you want the whole
landscape in focus...
so you're at you know Historic Site you want
everything in focus so whatever there's
different reasons to do it... think about
that, don't just say hey I bought a fast
lens I'm just gonna shoot wide open all
the time, because that's not always the
best solution.
So I will put Erica's information in the description.
You guys can follow her,
be sure to follow me
@DanielNortonphotographer.
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and I'll see you next time OnSet.