Photography class: Assignment 3 - Depth of Field

My third assignment for the Photography class was to take 3 different photos where I focused on different areas considering Depth of Field (DOF), I had to use the Aperture mode.

The main purpose of this assignment was to practice using depth of field, but also to learn how to affect the picture composition using the DOF.

I took three pictures of three simple objects in my house, some souvenirs, here they are:

Picture #1



Picture #2



Picture #3



DOF is not a camera feature, it is something that you can control using the aperture and the focal length. The smaller the aperture (bigger aperture value) the bigger the DOF, the bigger the aperture (smaller aperture value) the smaller DOF.

For me DOF is one of my favorites ways of composing photos, I think it is a great way to guide the user to where you want him/her to focus in the photo, it helps to highlight objects that you think are most important and to remove objects that might be distracting.

Here it is a picture of the same objects but with a bigger DOF, so the focus is not in one of the objects but in the three of them and the background is a lot more noticeable, which can be distracting.



Here it is a small video that helps understanding DOF: