In today’s Slanted Lens lesson we will take a look at depth of field as a creative tool while shooting some fashion shots on location at Vasquez Rocks. We will use a simple 2 light set up to shoot beautiful Gabrielle Tuite and look at how different lens focal lengths give us different depth of field options. We will look at what lens choice will give us a shallow depth and what lens choice will give us a more scenic deep depth of field. Vasquez is the perfect place to look at depth of field. It’s one of the most photographed places in Southern California. It has a long history of film making. It has been in Star Track “Captain Kurk and the Lizard fight”, Austin Powers, Bonanza, John Carter, and many many more. It has a very strong rock point that is graphic and the reason I wanted to shoot here. We will use that as a graphic element in our shots. Let’s take a look at depth of field as a creative tool.

Vasquez is the perfect place to look at depth of field. It’s one of the most photographed places in Southern California. It has a long history of film making. It has been in Star Track “Captain Kurk and the Lizard fight”, Austin Powers, Bonanza, John Carter, and many many more. It has a very strong rock point that is graphic and the reason I wanted to shoot here. We will use that as a graphic element in our shots. Let’s take a look at depth of field as a creative tool.

You can see from this comparison that the wider the lens the more depth of field you will have. Wider lenses give us more depth of field. Longer lenses give you a shallower depth of field. To achieve a shallow depth of field you need a longer lens with a smaller aperture number which gives us a larger aperture opening and less area of acceptable focus. A 200mm lens at f2.8 is going to give you a very shallow depth of field where as a 50mm lens at f2.8 still has a lot of depth of field. On the 5D mark 2 a 50mm lens at f2.8 twenty feet from the subject will give you 8.57 feet of acceptable area of focus. A 200mm lens at f2.8 twenty feet from the subject will give you 0.5 feet of acceptable area of focus. Even if you back away from the subject with a 200mm lens to 40 feet, the area of acceptable focus is only 2.04 feet. That is why it’s easier to throw the background out of focus with longer lenses. There is no right or wrong choice when it comes to depth of field. It’s a matter of what and how you want to communicate. There are many resources to get accurate information on Depth of Field. I use an app for the iphone called Depth of field master. Its a great app that lets you choose the camera lens and distance to get the depth of field. Here are two web pages that I have used as well that will give you the same information as the app.
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
http://www.dofmaster.com/doftable.html

Let’s take a look at how we light our image. We will use the sun as a rim light coming from camera left as our first light. I will set my exposure so that the highlight on the side of her body is bright but not over exposed.

To get the sun at the right exposure on her body I will be shooting at f11 and 1/125th of a second 160 ISO.
We will add a Photoflex large soft box on camera right to open up her face. I want a large source that will be soft and wrap.

Here is our image with the soft box as the key light. I will dial the power up on the Dynalite pack to give me good detail in her face. With this lighting set up I can play with different lenses and apertures. This image was shot on a 70mm lens at f11.

Let’s look as some images with different lens and f stop combinations. 33mm f14. Lots of depth of field from front to back.

This image was shot on a 70mm lens at f11.

100mm f2,8

150mm f2,8

170mm f8

200mm f2.8
This is a fun exercise. This is good information that will help you use depth of field as a creative tool.
Keep those cameras rolling, and keep on click’n!

Special thanks to our sponsors
http://www.kesslercrane.com/
http://www.tamron-usa.com/
http://www.dynalite.com/
http://www.photoflex.com/
http://www.rosco.com/us/index.cfm
http://www.azdencorp.com
http://www.glidecam.com/
http://www.vanguardworld.com
http://triplescoopmusic.com
http://theslantedlens.com/