Recently I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting around the house with my macro lens. I suppose there are two things I really like about it. Seeing small things big, as simple as it sounds, can often reveal things you wouldn’t otherwise notice. The second thing is that macros are notorious for shallow depth of field.
This shot isn’t new, but it’s also from my 100 mm macro. It comes courtesy of the shots I did at the zoo way back when. What it does share, however, is the super shallow depth of field.
| Camera & Lens | Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT (Canon) & 100.0 mm | Shutter: | 1/25 s | |||
| Creation Date: | 2008:12:16 16:01:59 | Aperture: | f/2.8 | |||
| Artist: | Ari Brown | ISO: | 200 | |||
| Exposure Mode: | Normal program | Focal Length: | 100 mm |
I love keeping things simple. If you’re blessed with a subject isolated from a background, you’re all set. If you’re (more likely) taking pictures of something with a distracting background, shooting for shallow DoF takes care of the problem for you.
If you don’t have a macro lens, you can still get shallow DoF, at least to a point. Here are the steps:
1. Open it up. Whatever your available aperture settings (f-stop) are, make sure you’re using the widest (smallest number) possible. This is often not a problem as unless you’re shooting under a lot of light, most cameras will do this automatically. For the cheaters out there, the “Portrait” setting found on most cameras is going to pick settings to minimize depth of field for the same reasons as I describe above. Use it as a quick way to get these settings.
2. Get as close as possible to your subject. Each camera and lens has a minimum focusing distance, and unfortunately this can be much farther than you want, but get as close as you can and still focus.
3. Position yourself so that things in the picture other than the subject are as far away as possible – just get as much separation as you can.
That’s it – with any luck, you should end up with a sharp subject and buttery smooth bliss in the background.
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