From the course: Photography Foundations: Lenses

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DOF and background size

DOF and background size

From the course: Photography Foundations: Lenses

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DOF and background size

By now you should be pretty comfortable with the understanding that wider apertures yield shallower depth of field. But think about this. This is kind of our fortune cookie moment here. If a tree in the forest is out of focus because of shallow depth of field and no one is around to see it, is it actually out of focus? Here is what I'm taking about and why this is relevant. Things in the background appear softer when you're using a wide aperture but if there isn't anything in the background or if what's in the background is really small, then you're not really going to be able to tell that you're shooting with shallow depth of field, now are you? Usually the point of shooting with shallow depth of field is to blur the background out to bring more attention to your subject. But if there is nothing in your background, it won't really matter what aperture you are at because you won't be able to see that anything in the frame is defocused. So when you're trying to achieve shallow depth of…

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