Declan Tyldesley

Photographic Techniques

Depth of Field

When taking a photograph Depth of Field (DOF) can be applied in multiple ways to take a high quality and focused photograph of a specific person, object etc. Depth of Field can be applied to the photograph by adjusting the Aperture (F-Stop) and the Shutter Speed. However before you do this you must find the correct ISO number so no digital noise is shown and you must also make sure that the image is not over exposed, so you gain a high quality photograph. By lowering the Aperture and increasing the Shutter Speed the image will stay at the same brightness as both of the numbers are balanced; however from this the background will then become more out of focus. In photographic terminology, Depth of Field is the range of focus between the nearest and farthest object and / or persons etc.

Below I am going to list a series of six images that shows me briefly demonstrating that I know how to use Depth of Field when taking a photograph. Depth of Field photographs;

As you can see above this is the first photograph I took, and from this I can see that there is a large range of focus behind the model as I have adjusted the Aperture to a high number and the Shutter Speed to a fairly low number. However I made all of the ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture numbers fairly balanced when taking this so the photo did not show any digital noise or over exposure. Currently the digital camera has briefly focused on both of the models to create quite a high quality photograph.

Declan Tyldesley

Above I have again listed another photograph showing that I can use the photographic technique Depth of Field. From this photograph I can see that the image has lost quite a bit of focus range as the background has become a bit less out of focus. This on the other hand is making the model at the front more in focus as the background is losing focus continuously.

Declan Tyldesley

Thirdly I have listed yet another photo showing a photographic technique of Depth of Field. The settings I used to take this photograph were on an Aperture number of 10 and the Shutter Speed was on 100 of a second. From this photo I can now tell the more I adjust the two numbers the background will become more out of focus and the model at the front will become more in focus. On the other hand I have also applied Rule of Thirds to each image by creating one or multiple focus points.

Declan Tyldesley

Fourthly I have listed yet another photograph demonstrating the photographic technique, Depth of Field. From yet another photograph I can see that the range of focus is minimizing to make it a slightly more interesting photograph with the background being blurry. When taking this photograph my settings were set to an Aperture number of 8 and a Shutter Speed number 160 of a second.

Declan Tyldesley

Fifthly again I can see that the range of focus or Depth of Field has minimized once again due the fact that I have adjusted the Aperture and Shutter Speed numbers once again. As I was taking this specific individual photograph my settings were on an Aperture number of 5 and a Shutter Speed number of 400 of a second. From this photograph I can not only see that it is gradually losing focus but also that the model at the front is becoming more in focus.

Declan Tyldesley

Lastly I am going to talk about the final image I took when demonstrating all of the photographic techniques such as ISO, Aperture etc. When taking this in particular photograph I adjusted my settings to an Aperture number of 4 and a Shutter Speed number to a total of 640 of a second. I can now see that the background is not fully out of focus however I do know that if I continued to adjust the numbers the background would have gradually lost focus to put full focus on the model stood in front. In my conclusion when I was taking all of these photographs I left the ISO number a total number of 200. By leaving it on this number I did not extract any daylight out of the image and left every image almost looking the same despite the loss of focus that gradually happened.