New Portfolio Enroute

For now, until I've put together a new portfolio slideshow (if you'll notice the previous one is not a broken link) here's a bit on aperture and depth of field.  For now here are some images, dealing with different variables of Depth of Field.  At the absolute most basic level the Depth of Field is the amount of distance from foreground to background that's capable of being in focus.

Here's an example of what a large depth of field can do for you, all of the pipes have nice clean edges both near and far,  as well as the ones off to the side.  

Aperture directly correlates to depth of field.  The measurement of Aperture is a mathematical derivative that's relative to the distance from the focal plane in a lens as measured to the film plane, and the diaphragm of the actual aperture.  When you look on a lens and you see 2.8, 8, 16, 32 you're actually seeing a fraction that's been shortened.  f/2.8 is how it's actually seen, f is a variable because taking a lens from one camera maker to another, suffice it to say that f/2.8 can also be seen as f : 2.8 or 1 : 2.8.

This image has the appearance of a shallow depth of field because of everything except the child being blurred, where in reality the depth of field is quite large.  To be able to have a long enough shutter speed with how bright it was outside the light entering the camera had to be minimized by opening up the depth of field.

How does aperture work?  f/32 gives you a great depth of field, f/64 gives you an even greater depth of field.  On the other end f/2.8 has a very shallow depth of field.  With that in mind the aperture controls the amount of light coming in to the camera as well.  For example at f/2.8 there's a very shallow depth of field you're also maximizing the amount of light being allowed in to the camera.  Conversely at f/64 you're expanding the depth of field to allow everything in vision to be in focus while greatly limiting the amount of light in to the camera by restricting the aperture (diaphragm) within the camera lens.

This image has two very good things going for it, first of all it has an extremely shallow depth of field, and secondly the lens used was a zoom lens which has allowed the image to be visually compressed and taken what would have been a blurred background and smashed it to a mixed color gradient.

Touching on what I mentioned earlier, the above and below images are both very shallow in their depth of field, both were shot at an aperture of f/2.8.

This image has a very shallow depth of field like the one before it, the big difference between this image and the one before it is that the zoom factor isn't as great, which is why the background doesn't seem to merge in to the flower that is in focus in the front.  A great zoom length (or focal length) leads to a greater amount of compression.  Compression is basically visually putting the background in to the same plane as the foreground.

Notice the streaks of light in this image, and the stars that seem to appear from the street lights?  Also notice how the rail road tracks don't seem to lose clarity in their line quality?  This has a very large depth of field, it's also a longer exposure, all my shots this particular night were between 30 seconds and 3 minutes and all had an aperture of f/22 or f/32 depending on which lens I used.

 The image above and below were both shot with very open depth of fields, the top image as noted was either f/22 or f/32 and the lower image was shot with an aperture some where between f/8 and f/16.

Here's one of those times where you're not really sure what the depth of field was.  The reason for this is because I used an effect filter, by adding a Circular Polarizer I was able to control the light reflecting on to a reflective surface, in this case the large panels are a mirrored glass on a sky scraper.  Setting the focus on the lens allowed me to get the pane holders in proper focus while adjusting the C.P. allowed me to boost and clear up the reflection in the mirrored glass.

 Below is one last image that shows how much fun a shallow depth of field can be.  Especially if you pay attention to the little spots of reflected light toward the top of the image that have begun to split off from the remainder of the background and in to their own existence.

Here's one last look at depth of field.  This was shot with at 70mm using a 70-mm200mm f/2.8 IS II L lens, not zooming in allowed the desserts behind the main to have some detail while blurring together everything in the deep background.

Any questions?  Please feel free to ask and I'll post the question with an answer and sample images to follow.