show {off} your shot

Welcome back, friends!

I asked my crazy cool sister, Clare, to guest judge this week and she was happy to help.
Clare's favorite photo from last week's show {off} is from Jaymi at Live, Love, Travel.

Clare writes, "The final composition was simply eye catching. The motion, clarity and vibrancy of the photo was impressive, and I appreciated/related to Jaymi's description of her trial and error and ongoing attempts to get the perfect shot.
Congrats, Jaymi! Mission accomplished!"

<center><a href="http://andthenshesnapped.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="and then, she {snapped}" src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j52/drexgal/winbutton.jpg" /></a></center>

This week I'm going to talk a little bit about depth of field.

Depth of field refers to how much of your subject is in focus, and is controlled by adjusting your "aperture" or "f stop". 

Aperture refers to how wide your shutter opens.

A smaller aperture (shutter opening) is equal to a larger f stop and creates a larger depth of field, so MORE of your subject is in focus. 

And the opposite is true as well, so a larger aperture (opening) is equal to a smaller f stop and creates a shallower depth of field, so LESS of your subject is in focus. 

A friend showed me this handy little depth of field calculator:

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

You can input your focal length, distance from the subject and your f stop and it will calculate your depth of field! How nerdy is that??

Here are a couple shots from dinner the night, shot with my 35mm lens and my subject was approximately 3 feet away from the camera.  On the first shot I used f/1.8 which according to the calculator has a depth of field of only .15 feet (or 1.8 inches) in focus!  See how Charlie and the background are both blurry?  Really just Chris' nose is in focus.  : )

The next shot I adjusted my f stop to  f/5.6 which results in a depth of field of .49 feet (or about 6 inches) in focus, so this way all of my boys' faces are in focus...

I tend to like my aperture really large (I love my 35mm f/1.8 lens) UNLESS I'm shooting a group, because I usually want the whole group in focus, you know?   

What tip can you share this week?  Anything?  Please link up to your blog and share something about how you set up or took the photo, or how you edited it.  I really want to know, so please don't skip this part!  Then add my button so others can play along!  I can't wait to see what you come up with this week!

<center><a href="http://andthenshesnapped.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="and then, she {snapped}" src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j52/drexgal/101014_2456_centuryfont.jpg" /></a></center>