Travel Photography In a Day For Dummies by Serge Timacheff

Author:Serge Timacheff [Timacheff, Serge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-07-10T23:00:00+00:00

Figures 2-6: Overhead sunlight can cast shadows on your subject’s face (left). By forcing the flash to fire, you can fill shadows easily (right).

Depth-of-field basics

Depth of field is like a swimming pool with essentially two types: shallow and deep. If you understand these extremes, you can figure out the in-betweens. Here’s a rundown of shallow and deep depths of field:

Shallow depth of field means not very much of your image is in focus, with the exception of your subject, as shown in Figure 2-4 earlier in this chapter, where the fruit is in focus but the plants around it are blurry. To get that effect, you have two primary options, or a mix of the two:

• You can open your aperture to a very wide setting, such as f/2.8 or whatever your lens’ widest setting might be. Some point-and-shoot cameras have a depth-of-field option that you can explore, as well. Remember, however, that this will let a lot more light into the camera so you have to make your shutter speed faster to compensate.

• If you have a telephoto lens, longer shots (more than 100mm focal length) cause some shallow depth-of-field effect. If you’re shooting a bird in a flock at a distance, for example, that one bird will be in focus but most others around it will not be.

• If you combine these factors, shooting a wide aperture with a telephoto shot, you can get some extremely shallow depth-of-field images.

• Extra note: Macro images, shot very close-up, typically look best with shallow depth of field. A lot of macro lenses are telephoto, so they naturally compress the distance and cause the shallow effect. Take a look at Figure 2-4 earlier in this chapter. If you have a wide open aperture, it will increase the effect.

Deep depth of field is useful, in particular, when you’re shooting groups of people, such as all your new best friends on a cruise out on the sun deck. You want to have a narrow aperture, meaning a large f-stop number (such as f/16 or f/22) to make sure everyone, closer and farther, is in focus. Using a normal or wide-angle lens will help, too. The larger and “deeper” the group or subject matter, the higher your f-stop needs to be.

If you’re shooting something at infinity, or a distance beyond what your camera needs to focus (after a certain distance, it’s all in focus), such as a mountain range far away, your depth of field doesn’t matter anymore. That’s because to your camera, it just looks like one flat image way far away.

Cropping

Cropping refers to cutting out external parts of your photo in order to close in on something specific and emphasize it. Some point-and-shoot and phone cameras can crop photos after you’ve taken them, which can be useful. However, if you have a big-enough megapixel capability, you can always do this yourself later after downloading the image to your computer. If you’re uploading directly to Facebook from your phone, however, you may want to crop something first.

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