With the depth of field you control the views of the audience. Here you will learn how to use this instrument consciously.
Depth of field blur means the main subject of your movie is sharp and the foreground and background are blurry. Not only does it look good, it also lets you control the eyes of viewers and pinpoint what’s important and what’s unimportant. This effect is also used in cinema films.
In this example we want to show how the policeman talks to the woman. The cars (in the background) and the third person on the left (in the foreground) are unimportant and therefore out of focus.
How strong this effect occurs in a photo depends on a few factors. The most important two are the focal length of the lens (ie the zoom factor) and the f-number. The closer you zoom in on your subject and the larger the aperture (the lower the f-number, e.g., f3.5), the fuzzier your foreground and background become.
It is important that your images are sharp. This is possible either via the autofocus of the camera or, in the case of SLR cameras, via the manual focus, ie by manually adjusting the focus. If you use the autofocus, you must take special care that the camera focuses on the right subject, usually the subject in the middle.
