Depth-of-field is the distance between the closets and the farthest objects which are in sharp focus in the photograph. You’d have come across photographs wherein the background is out-of-focus and blurred while the subject is in sharp focus. That’s the difference the depth-of-field makes.
A photograph in which a larger distance is in focus is said to have higher depth-of-field. Accordingly, a photograph in which the subject is in sharp focus but the background is blurred is said to have a shallow depth of field. You can apply depth-of-field according to different situations and change the mood of the photograph. Let’s see how one can control the depth-of-field.
If you remember the concept of the pin-hole-camera you’d recall how a smaller hole resulted in a sharper image. Whereas if I enlarged the hold, the picture used to become blurred. It’s pretty much the same thing that happens in your camera except the fact that you have a lens which you can use to focus on a particular subject. So if you make a large hole in the pin-hole-camera and use a moving lens, you’d be able to focus on a subject.
In the camera you will vary the aperture to achieve the same result. Given that all the other settings are the same, a picture shot at a smaller f-stops will have shallow depth-of-field than the one shot at a high f-stops. If you are wondering what an f-stops is you may want to read more on it in my other post Photography: Coming To Terms With Exposure.
When you are shooting portraits you would want to blur out the background and keep the subject in focus. While at other times when you are shooting landscape you want to have most of the field in focus. Here you want to have a higher depth-of-field and will shoot at a high f-stops.
Things to keep in mind
When you are shooting at high f-stops you will want to decrease the shutter speed or increase the ISO to compensate for lack of light due to the small aperture. Again, when shooting at large aperture you will want to use a higher shutter speed to prevent overexposing the shot.
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