January Submissions

How is everyone doing with their January assignment?!  Some of you may be stuck on finding a suitable subject for your photo, but as you can see from this next submission, it’s not the subject matter, but the technique that we want you to show us!

Lee-Anne Thornton, of AB, sent me this photo for the January assignment:

Taken with Canon EOS 30D at f/4.5, 1/50 sec., ISO 800

Now you may just see canned goods, but I see some great depth of field!  Notice how her cans in the fore- and backgrounds are out of focus, while her 2nd can is in sharp focus?  Great job, Lee-Anne!

I also received this submission from Melanie Smith, of NL:

Taken with Canon Digital Rebel XT at f/2, 1/160 sec., ISO 400

Her focus on this photo is on Baby Jesus, with Mary & Joseph slightly out of focus (see Mary’s hand?), and the angel even more so.  Lovely! 

Thank you both for your submissions!  There’s still just over a week left to submit photos to be entered into the random draw for our January prize so be sure to send me YOUR submission!  And there’s still time to enter our contest too!

Cheers,

Revealed!

Here’s the January prize pack from Me and My Big Ideas that is up for grabs!

How’s that for incentive to get up and start playing with your camera?  *wink*  You can find the January tutorial and assignment here.

Cheers,

January Prize Pack…

is from Me and My Big Ideas!!

Photo to follow tomorrow night sometime!!

Cheers,

January assignment: Depth of Field

Ever notice how some photos have subjects that just seem to POP off the background?  More than likely, they are photos with a very shallow depth of field.  The term, depth of field (DoF), is ”the portion of a scene that appears acceptably sharp in the image”¹.

DoF is a relatively straight-forward technique and is determined by a number of factors, such as subject distance, focal length, aperture and format size¹.  However, for this tutorial, we are going to concentrate on using aperture to control our DoF.

 The premise of the technique is that the smaller your aperture, the larger your DoF.  To understand DoF, you must understand aperture, shutter speed and the correlation between the two.  You may recall this discussion in my article in the Spring 2008 issue of Canadian Scrapbooker, Capturing the Light: Aperture & Exposure.  Aperture is the measure of the shutter’s opening which allows light to enter the lens.   I have found that the part that sometimes confuses people is that a higher (or smaller) aperture is represented by a larger number (e.g.: f/22).  Conversely, a lower (or larger) aperture is denoted by a smaller number, such as f/1.8.  Once you can remember this, it will become easier!

I have taken a series of photographs to demonstrate the effects of changing your aperture to control your DoF.  I lined up our personalized mugs and using various apertures, snapped these photos.  In all photos, I was focused on my name on the red mug.    In the first photo, the small aperture of f/22 allowed for a large enough DoF to allow all four mugs to be in focus, relatively.  The mugs on the outer edges are a bit softer but this is due to my close proximity to the subjects.

Taken with Nikon D70 at f/22, 1/2.5 sec., ISO 800

 Next, I increased my aperture by half, to f/11.  Note how the DoF is changing and becoming smaller.

Taken with Nikon D70 at f/11, 1/10 sec., ISO 800

Taken with Nikon D70 at f/8, 1/15 sec., ISO 800

Decreasing my aperture by half again, to f/4, the outer cups are completely out of focus and the third cup is on its’ way:

¹ www.wikipedia.com