Depth of field

alexthecheese · 18 Mar 2006 at 23:34

I bought a Canon Powershot S80 the otehr day and have since beenr eading techniques on how to get the most out of it, and came across a technique which you guys call Depth of Field and I have no clue about what it is.

Well, I think I sorta do actually - that fantastic photo a few threads down with the dew on the leaf is a DOF photo is it not? If it is I was just wondering how to go about doing it, and also would my camera be able to do it?

Also are there any good guides that I can get my teeth into for using my camera? DPReview has some good ones but I've soaked those up already

alexthecheese · 19 Mar 2006 at 00:18

Thanks for the replies, I thought it was something like that but had never even heard of an aperture setting before!

Thanks also for the link, I'll get reading on that tomorrow.

One other thing though, is that with the Canon camera that I have on order, will it be possible to actually distinguish the depth of view from the LCD screen whilst lining up the shot? Obviously the viewfinder wont take into account the aperture setting, meaning that I'll have to rely on judging the shot from the LCD which sounds like it could be tricky.

alexthecheese · 19 Mar 2006 at 00:22

Oh and that's ET on your desk, isnt it.

alexthecheese · 19 Mar 2006 at 10:41

Right, ok. To be honest from what I've read now it sounds the effect I was hoping for won't be as profound with a compact camera, but I did notice you can change the aperture which DPReview.com quoted as below:

• Wide: F2.8 / 3.2 / 3.5 / 4.0 / 4.5 / 5.0 / 5.6 / 6.3 / 7.1 / 8.0
• Tele: F5.3 / 5.6 / 6.3 / 7.1 / 8.0