Mike just wrote a little informational post about what depth of field is, which reminded me that I had a fun idea for an article. See, depth of field effects are a great way to highlight part of your photograph by naturally blurring parts of the image and leaving other parts in focus. More blur is called a “short depth of field” and less blur is usually called “long depth of field.” Stephanie has pulled off some great examples of this using her sweet Nikon.

There are a number of ways to pull off depth of field tricks. Usually people use either a telephoto lens and zoom into an object that’s far away (which shortens the depth of field) or they use a diopter, which naturally limits the depth of field so that you can be REALLY close to an object when photographing it. Check out this photo of some tulips I took for an example of what using a diopter looks like. Cool huh?

The problem with both of these techniques is that they require a camera that allows you to mount lenses, and most point & shoot cameras don’t provide this functionality. Fortunately, with a little work you can pull off photos that have a shortened depth of field, and a heightened sense of drama. Excited now? Well, read on for some simple tips…

First off, you need to get to know how your camera zooms. In point & shoot cameras there are two types of zoom: optical (real) and digital (fake). Optical zoom uses the lens of the camera to zoom in and out while digital zoom simply blows up the image the lens captures. In order to pull of depth off field effects, you need a decent optical zoom on your camera, since digital zoom won’t work. My Olympus C-2020z has 3X optical zoom and our Canon PowerShot SD110 maxes out at 2X optical. If you’re trying for dramatic effects, you’ll see that the higher the optical zoom power, the better results you’ll get.

In addition to having a good optical zoom, it helps, when trying to get some cool depth of field effects, to have a good macro feature on your camera. Most point & shoot cameras represent the macro setting with a little flower. What macro does is allow you to focus on specific, very close locations easier (usually a penny or an insect). Our Canon requires you to be in macro mode to focus on anything closer than a few feet away, and since this trick is going to require you to be about a foot from your subject, you’ll need to make sure macro is turned on.

Tomorrow we’ll continue this article with some more photos and specific tips on how to make depth of field work for you. Until then, pull out that manual (you didn’t throw it away did you?) and learn how to work your camera!