4 pts. Due September 28th.

Work outside during the day.

For cameras and cameraphones

Take 30 photos in which there is something in the foreground and something in the background, something near the camera and something far from the camera. Use perspective to create a strong sense of dept.

Put the 30 photos on an album in Flickr. Send your best two to the class group.

Due: September 28, 2:30 pm

Camera

Use shallow depth of field to make either the foreground or the background out of focus. Sometimes focus on the object closest to the camera and sometimes to the object farthest from the camera.

To achieve shallow depth of field, use the Av shooting mode and set the aperture to the widest- lowest number – setting. Zoom in and get close to the subject in the foreground.

Cameraphones

You can either create a series of closeups that have shallow depth of field or use software such as Focos to simulate shallow depth of field.

Camera Phones and Depth of Field

Camera phones have a fixed aperture. For example, the aperture of the iPhone 7 is f1.8. This is one of the things that makes cameraphones so good in low light. You might think this wide open aperture would make it easy to get shallow depth of field with a cameraphone. However, the other factors involved make it quite challenging to achieve shallow depth of field with a cameraphone.

When you look at a phone, you can see the challenge for focal length. Focal length is the distance between where the light converges in the lens and the sensor and there just isn’t that much space. Even for cameraphones, we use the size of 35 mm film as the standard when discussing focal length. So the iPhone 11 has three lenses that are the 35 mm equivalent of 13mm, 26mm and 52mm. Earlier phones with one camera have one focal length. If working with a camera phone with more than one lenses, use the telephoto choice to create shallow depth of field.

Camera to subject distance is the factor that gives you the most control of depth of field when working with a camera phone. To create shallow depth of field bring the camera as close as possible to the subject. Allow for some actual space behind the subject

It is the small size of the sensor that makes cameraphones so good at achieving extensive depth of field. It is also the main reason it is so hard to get your cameraphone to achieve shallow depth of field.

Depth of field created by software

To solve this problem, cameraphones use software. You may have Portrait Mode on your phone or you can download any number of Apps including Focos which I used for this example. I think this is pretty typical. Overall, the software did a good job of softening the background but it could not tell that the ear on the left should be sharp.

  • Processed with Focos