When you think about controlling the depth of field, the aperture may instantly come to mind. In its simplest form, this would be correct. However, other factors are at play regarding depth of field.
Knowing these different factors will help you understand and control your depth of field. Manipulating the factors of aperture, distance to subject, and focal length and how they affect depth of field will allow you to master this critical skill of creating stunning images, whether portraits or landscapes. First, you must understand depth of field.
In its simplest form, depth of field is the distance between the nearest and furthest objects that appear acceptably sharp in the image. Easy, right? Suppose you have ever talked to another photographer or anyone remotely interested in photography. In that case, you will hear them talk about aperture and f-stop and, more than likely, interchange the two during a conversation.
I also fall into this trap when explaining depth of field and that there is a difference. What's the difference? The aperture is the adjustable opening in a lens, and its size is measured by the f-stop number. Now that we know the difference between aperture and f-stop, we can explore what you can achieve with various f-stops.
Knowing that the f-stop is the size of our lens's aperture will help us better understand the difference between a shallow depth of field and a deep depth of field. You may have heard the terms shallow depth of field and deep depth of field..