Simple Photography Tips - Depth of field problems

Three simple photography tips on what to do when you're trying to capture a complete scene including the foreground

• check the depth of field and shutter-speed if you're using a camera

• If there's something in the way, try a different angle

• If there's something in the way, deliberately incorporate it into your picture

  
  

  
  

With the last of the cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) fading from the countryside scene here in the UK, here are some shots taken a couple of weeks ago on my iPhone. They illustrate how concentrating on a subject in the foreground can affect the background.

Image One - Cow parsley with out of focus stream

Image One shows the effect of focusing on the plant in the foreground. I've not zoomed in very much, but you can see that even then, the background is out of focus.

Image Two - Cow parsley with less out of focus stream

Image Two, I've stepped back a half metre, which has brought the rather lovely backdrop, one of my favourite local river scenes, more in focus.

But it is rather 'something and nothing'. The flower is in focus, but an almost irrelevant obstruction; the scene itself is not in focus enough to be worth the image.

Image Three - Cow parsley out of focus, in-focus stream

Image Three, shows the background in focus, but the cow parsely is totally out of focus. Oddly enough, out of focus foreground seems visually worse than the other way round.

Image Four - Cow parsley hidden amongst water weeds, with almost out of focus stream

Images Four shows the result of selecting a wider angle lens on my iphone, and moving in closer. The downside of this is that the flower has now become part of the background, being half blended with the water plants. The background is more in focus, but not sharp.

Image Five - Cow parsley and in-focus stream

In Image Five, I've used an even wider angle, which has brought almost the entire image into focus. However, by including more of the foreground—beautiful, don’t get me wrong—I’ve somehow lost the charm of the stream running through the willows. It just wasn’t quite the effect I was after.

If you're using a phone camera then you're sort of stuck with aperture, there being relatively little difference between the lenses. There is no simple photography tip that will change that, nor a complicated photography tip for that matter!

With a DSLR or similar, and depending on your lens choice, you can stick the thing on f22, or whatever is your smallest aperture, and have much more of the flower up large and in focus, along with the background scene also in focus.