# Lage Focus area large F-Stop, HOW????



## vipgraphx (Jan 16, 2014)

I was wanting to know how in the world do people take photos with large focus areas with large/wide open apertures?

I have always thought that if you had a 50mm 1.8 lens and shot at 1.8 that the focus area would be very small. I have been seeing some images out there where they are using same lens and f-stop and are able to get a large focus area.

What am I missing?


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## weepete (Jan 16, 2014)

Distance to subject affects DOF too. The larger the distance the bigger the slice of dof there will be. It's how you can take moon and star shots at large apetures too


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## 480sparky (Jan 16, 2014)

Perhaps a link to a sample?


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## KmH (Jan 16, 2014)

vipgraphx said:


> I was wanting to know how in the world do people take photos with large focus areas with large/wide open apertures?
> 
> I have always thought that if you had a 50mm 1.8 lens and shot at 1.8 that the focus area would be very small. I have been seeing some images out there where they are using same lens and f-stop and are able to get a large focus area.
> 
> What am I missing?


You're missing a good understand of how depth-of-field works.
The focus area will be as wide and as high as the image frame, and discounting the variable amount of field curvature many lenses have, the plane of focus is parallel to the plane of the image sensor.
The depth of that focus area is what depth-of-field (DoF) is all about.

As mentioned, point of focus (PoF) distance has a big effect on how deep DoF is.

A 50 mm lens set to f1.8 delivers only 0.2 feet of total DoF when the PoF is 5 feet from the image sensor.
Double the PoF 2x, to 10 feet, and the total DoF increases 4x to 0.8 feet.
Double to PoF again, to 20 feet, and the total DoF again increase 4x to 3.3 feet.
Double to PoF again, to 40 feet, and the total DoF again increase 4x to 13.5 feet.
And so on.

A 100 mm lens set to f/1.8 follows essentially the same square function as PoF distance is doubled.

Plug the numbers into an online DoF calculator - Online Depth of Field Calculator


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## Derrel (Jan 16, 2014)

I was wanting to know how in the world do people take photos with large focus areas with large/wide open apertures?

Answer: Move to a smaller film format or to a smaller digital sensor size. THe smaller the film or sensor, the greater the depth of field for each equivalent picture angle. THIS, the deep depth of field with small-sensor cameras, is one of the reasons the new, small-format mirrorless cameras are so popular with people who shoot "street", and who want deep depth of field, at wide lens apertures!


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## vipgraphx (Jan 16, 2014)

500px / Elena Shumilova / Photos

Browse through her images. Most are taken at large Fstops but yet the the whole person/animal is in focus. 


FYI
 I tried duplicating some of those settings and for the most part I could not get those results..not the processing part but keeping everything except the background in focus. Also there is no motion blur. With some of those settings it seems impossible, but its being done&#8230;...


thanks for any help!


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## vipgraphx (Jan 16, 2014)

KmH said:


> vipgraphx said:
> 
> 
> > I was wanting to know how in the world do people take photos with large focus areas with large/wide open apertures?
> ...




IS this why many photographers really like the 85mm because you can get more in focus at larger F values?  Or even the 100mm + lenses?

Thanks...

Yeah I am clueless when it comes to all that mathematical stuff. I really should start learning more about that. I just shoot and adjust until it looks good to me. I have some decent knowledge of what needs to be done  to accomplish what I need, but now as I am trying to get more into lighting and portraits, I need to take the time to really understand.

Landsapes,Interior,City Scapes what I do a lot of is easy because I use mid to low F values so everything is in focus&#8230;


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## vipgraphx (Jan 16, 2014)

Derrel said:


> I was wanting to know how in the world do people take photos with large focus areas with large/wide open apertures?
> 
> Answer: Move to a smaller film format or to a smaller digital sensor size. THe smaller the film or sensor, the greater the depth of field for each equivalent picture angle. THIS, the deep depth of field with small-sensor cameras, is one of the reasons the new, small-format mirrorless cameras are so popular with people who shoot "street", and who want deep depth of field, at wide lens apertures!



This lady uses FF


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## Light Guru (Jan 16, 2014)

They could be doing focus stacking on the computer. 

I prefer the old school way and use the tilt and swing of a large format camera to manipulate the plane of focus.


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## Rosy (Jan 16, 2014)

KmH said:


> vipgraphx said:
> 
> 
> > I was wanting to know how in the world do people take photos with large focus areas with large/wide open apertures?
> ...



BRAIN!  impressive


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## wyogirl (Jan 16, 2014)

I'm not sure how she achieved some of her photos.  A few of them look Photoshopped but I'm not 100% sure about that though.


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## robbins.photo (Jan 16, 2014)

wyogirl said:


> I'm not sure how she achieved some of her photos.  A few of them look Photoshopped but I'm not 100% sure about that though.



Well looking at the shot of the boy touching the dog's nose with the misty woods in the background I'd be willing to bet some pretty good money that this photo has been majorly altered - I'm guessing of course but if the EXIF data hasn't also been altered my guess would be that the boy and dog were masked out and that the rest of the photograph was then blurred and the mist was most likely added in post as well.  It's a very masterful job of post processing and would be very time consuming but this does look pretty heavily doctored at least to my eye.


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## KmH (Jan 16, 2014)

It's unfortunate the viewfinder in so many DSLR cameras is so dim.
Thank auto focus for that, because the main mirror has to have a section in it that is 50% transparent so light can get through the main mirror to the secondary mirror behind it, and then down to the AF module in the bottom of the camera.

Consequently few people use the DoF preview feature on their camera, if their camera even has a DoF preview function.


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## vipgraphx (Jan 16, 2014)

robbins.photo said:


> wyogirl said:
> 
> 
> > I'm not sure how she achieved some of her photos.  A few of them look Photoshopped but I'm not 100% sure about that though.
> ...




Yeah I am thinking this as well. I am not a professional photographer but I am a professional Graphic Designer. My knowledge of photoshop goes back to 2001. When I saw these photos the first thing I said is 
that is some cool processing! In no way is this out of camera images. When you use photoshop so much and do similar things you start to recognize digitally enhanced photos. She does an excellent job and 
PROPS to her!

Now looking at here EXF info, there has to be something going on there because like I said I tried duplicating some of the shots she did at 50mm and I could not do it with same numbers plugged into the D610.

As far as focus stacking that could be but, with those animals and kids I think it would be hard to accomplish that.


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## robbins.photo (Jan 17, 2014)

vipgraphx said:


> robbins.photo said:
> 
> 
> > wyogirl said:
> ...



Well my guess there is she is photo stacking - most likely the background of the shot was taken with the EXIF data listed, and the main subjects were from another photo - again I'm just guessing of course but if you look at the dog in particular you'll notice he stands out a little too much from the background in a lot of the shots - can't be 100% certain but with animals in particular you'll normally see little bits of fur here and there standing up and in this case you really don't - their is a noticeable demarkation at least to my eye between the dog's outline and the background.  That leads me to believe that she's taken the dog and the boy out of one shot and placed them into another, probably with a very similar background.

So if I were going to duplicate this I'd probably shoot the picture with a small aperture to get the boy and dog into sharp focus, then take a second with a much wider aperture to get the background, then combine the two - if your using the background shot as your first image and adding the boy/dog shot over top then the EXIF data would be coming from the background shot, which of course would explain the numbers were seeing.

Like you I'm impressed with the photoshop skills - it would take a lot of time in post to put together two images like that even if they were pretty similar images - but I guess if you really love that effect and you have the time it would certainly be possible.


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## Braineack (Jan 17, 2014)

Derrel said:


> I was wanting to know how in the world do people take photos with large focus areas with large/wide open apertures?
> 
> Answer: Move to a smaller film format or to a smaller digital sensor size. THe smaller the film or sensor, the greater the depth of field for each equivalent picture angle. THIS, the deep depth of field with small-sensor cameras, is one of the reasons the new, small-format mirrorless cameras are so popular with people who shoot "street", and who want deep depth of field, at wide lens apertures!



got it, move to Advantix.


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## Big Mike (Jan 17, 2014)




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