How to shoot with application focus

For beginners, choosing the right focus is a very important basic knowledge. How to use the focus when shooting? The following is my sharing experience. Let's have a look.

When taking pictures, the relationship between focal length and depth of field must be the clearest, and the focal length will be affected by depth of field before and after, especially when the three elements of shallow depth of field are met. The farther an object is from the focus, the shallower the depth of field will be and the more blurred it will be. Let's take a look at the following examples:

1. For the flowers with the focus in the middle, the foreground and background are also blurred.

For the safflower with the focus in the middle, the shallow depth of field is blurred before and after.

2. Focus on the foreground, with clear foreground and blurred background.

Focus on the flowers in the foreground, and use the windmill in the background as a foil to highlight the main body of the foreground.

3. The focus is blurred in the background, and the foreground is used for framing.

Focus on the background, use the foreground to make the frame composition, so that the main body of the background is more prominent.

It can be seen that when we choose the focus, we can make a shallow depth of field effect on the foreground and background scenes, so that the foreground and/or background become blurred. Of course, the larger the aperture or the longer the focal length, the more obvious the shallow depth of field effect will be.

When using wide-angle lens, the shallow depth of field is not obvious.

Wide-angle lens, even the largest aperture in the world, can't significantly reduce the depth of field.

When using telephoto lenses, the scene is much darker.

200mm focal length, focusing flowers, plus a large aperture of f/2.8, shallow depth of field is easily realized.

Theory belongs to theory, and you may not know the actual operation after reading it. Now let's look at some practical examples!

How to look at the panorama with focus first? We use a wide-angle lens (16mm) and a small aperture (f/ 16) to focus on the middle of the photo (near the hillside), so that the whole photo will be clear within the depth of field.

Small aperture and intermediate focus = full definition (Nikon D700F/1616mm)

Well, how can we shoot in this environment? Let's change the composition, focus, aperture and find something interesting to shoot!

1. Focus on the future.

With a slightly larger aperture f/4 and f/2.8, you can focus on the distant hillside, which can blur the branches and grass in the foreground and make the focused scene more prominent.

Large aperture, distant focus = blurred foreground, setting off the main body (Nikon D700 f/4 50mm)

Note that sometimes we don't need to blur the foreground too much, otherwise the reader may not know what the photographer wants to shoot.

Large aperture, distant focus = blurred foreground, setting off the main body (Nikon D700 f/2.8 50mm)

Pay attention to close range

Find out the interesting things in the environment, then focus the subject (floret) with a large aperture (f/2.8), blur the background with a shallow depth of field, and highlight the subject.

Large aperture, close focus = blurred background, highlighting the main body (Nikon D700 f/ 1.8 50mm)