Art 250 News: Assignment #1 Depth of Field

Your first assignment is “Depth of Field”.
Depth of field is regulated by the aperture of the lens, distance from the subject, and the focal length of your lens.
Read the information in your book about the lens and depth of field.

f-4, shallow depth of field, (3:00 PM)

f-22, great depth of field

Photograph the same ("non-moving") subject in three set-ups without moving the camera position. Thinking in terms of distances from the camera, try sensing a foreground, middle ground and background in your shot. Look at the lighting and make sure shapes are being distinguished. Focus on the foreground or near middle ground. Do not change your focus once you begin shooting. Before you shoot make sure your exposure range will work for the light you choose. You may want to start wide open (f2.8 or 4) and check with your meter to make sure that your shutter speed will match the scene on both ends of the scale for your ISO. Bright sunlight may not be the best choice for this assignment.

First use a wide f–stop (2.8 or 4 ). Adjust the shutter speed to get a normal exposure. Manually focus and do not change your focus for the rest of this set of shots. Then take a shot at f-8 and finally at f-16 or 22 or whatever the smallest aperture your lens has. Changing your shutter speed to create an equivalence throughout (example: add three stops with aperture, take away three stops with shutter to keep equal amount of light). Take all the pictures of the same scene.

After shooting your initial set, create a variation. If you have a zoom lens set your lens at 50 mm for first set of shots and for a variation zoom in at least to 80mm and repeat the first part of the assignment. If you don’t have a zoom, but a fixed lens, then move into the foreground object as close as it will focus and repeat the first part of the assignment. Try macro if you have it.

After shooting your 6 technical images, divide the rest of the roll into two parts (say 15 and 15) and shoot half as great depth of field and half as shallow depth.

Process your film, scan an send me the 6 images as well as 4 great depth and 4 shallow depth images.

Shot count:
1) Great depth of field (f16- 32)
2) Medium depth of field (f8)
3) Shallow depth of field (f1.8- 4)
4-6) Closer Distance or Zooming in to subject. (3 images at varying f stops same as above.)

7-21) Great depth of field of anything that interests you- look for interesting light, and subject matter

22-36) Shallow depth of field- use a large f-stop opening like 1.8-4 to give you a soft focused background.

Include a paragraph describing what you learned with your scans.

Here is a set of images showing what the Depth of field part of the assignment (with variation) should look like: