Depth of Field

Depth of Field is commonly used in an extremely high amount of photography in the 21st century, however, what is depth of field? Depth of field is the amount of bokah / blur surrounding a subject in a photo, it is commonly used in pictures that are close up to a subject. In other words, the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects giving a focused image.

To achieve shallow depth of field, you would need medium to well lit lighting to achieve a non pixilated picture. and the lower the f stop the more shallow depth of field can be achieved. An ideal f stop would be around F1.7. here is an image of shallow depth of field.

Here is a picture taken at F1.7 with shallow DOF

As you can see only the subject is in focus. (this picture is straight out of my GH4 with no post editing.)

Deep depth of field requires a wider aperture (example f/2.8 or wider). To achieve a very deep depth of field, you need an aperture setting of f/16 or smaller. Also the focal length of your lens affects depth-of-field (the smaller the mm lens the lesser DOF).

As you can see there is a deep depth of field in this picture.

This picture was taken in f2.8 with deep depth of field. (taken on my GH4 with no post processing.