Friday, September 16, 2011

Depth of Field & a Rainy Day!

Hello Friends!
Today I was planning on spending my morning outside in the sunshine taking pictures and working on some of my photography class assignments.  It's a dreary (but much needed) rainy day!  I actually really LOVE rainy days but I have only learned how to take outdoor pictures so far in my class with real natural light!  YIKES!  What is a girl to do???  Well, I decided to make some lemonade and get out there anyway!
Today I am still working on my Aperture assignment but wanted to mess around with the depth of field, too.  Here is a detailed description for all of you who do not know what Depth of Field means...

"In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance at a time, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions.
In some cases, it may be desirable to have the entire image sharp, and a large DOF is appropriate. In other cases, a small DOF may be more effective, emphasizing the subject while de-emphasizing the foreground and background. In cinematography, a large DOF is often called deep focus, and a small DOF is often called shallow focus.
The DOF is determined by the camera-to-subject distance, the lens focal length, the lens f-number, and the format size or circle of confusion criterion."

So what I've done on this first set of pictures is set my dial to Aperture Mode (which is A on a Nikon) and I used the front dial on the right side to set my Aperture to 1:1.4.  If you have a kit lens or you are using a zoom lens it will be a higher number.  I splurged and purchased the 50mm 1:1.4 lens for my Nikon and am soooo happy that I did!  My indoor shots are so much brighter.  The reason is that my Aperture goes open all the way to 1:1.4, which means it brings in more light.
For my depth of field test I just took the same focal point but I moved closer and farther away.  I kept my Aperture on 1:1.4 the entire time.  LIke I said, it is a rainy day so these would look so much better with the sunshine.  :)






7 comments:

  1. Sunshine or not, I think they still turned out great! Great job Robyn!

    Jenny

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  2. Great job, Robyn. Overcast or rainy days are often great times to get out and photograph in order to see the differences in the effects of light. Good for you for taking this course with all the other activities in your life!!!

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  3. Thank you for sharing on this blog. I love your pictures. I hope to learn from you!

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  4. Very beautiful pictures! I'm always taking photos of flowers!

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  5. These all turned out great Robyn! I'm really enjoying your photo blog! One of my besties is a photographer, she's teaching a photo class for all of us mom's at church in December....I soooo can't wait!!!

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  6. That sounds AWESOME Missy!! I just got a groupon this weekend for more Photography classes. I might have to take them!!

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  7. I'm really enjoying all your great tips and fantastic photos....I just recently purchased a Canon EOS 60D and it's been so much fun taking pictures with it, but there is so much too learn....you make it so easy and you explain everything very nicely. Thank you!
    ~Silvia

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