←→Depth of Field Selection

Posted Monday, February 12th, 2007 · Permalink

Last week I talked about motion-blur photography and how it can bring your photographs to life by showing movement. Today we’ll be looking at how you can use the manual aperture function on your camera to selectively focus on a single point in your picture, leaving the rest blurry. To illustrate this concept, here is an example from Chinatown in Bangkok, Thailand.

From this example you notice that the shrimp are sharp and the surrounding area is blurry. This is because I used a large aperture diameter to create shallow depth of field, thus letting me focus on a specific area leaving things in front and behind blurry. The application of this technique is usually reserved for close-ups, but you can play around and find other applications.

Here are a few more examples from my Asia trip last summer.

To accomplish this effect you first need to figure out how to manually configure your aperture setting on your camera. Each camera has a different way of accessing this functionality, so my suggestion is to consult your camera’s manual if you can’t figure that part out.

Once you’re educated, bump the aperture diameter up by making the aperture figure as low as possible. Now go and take a picture of something, preferably a close-up. It’s all about getting a detail. Food is my favorite for this. Once your selection is in focus, shoot and see if you’re happy with the results.

Note that not every camera is as good as the next with taking such shots and it might require some tinkering before you get the desired effect. That said, the resulting pictures can be quite nice and it’s a fun thing to play around with a little along your travels.

Filed under Photography Tips.