MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY
and Depth of Field T
he photograph below of a knob tailed gecko shows shallow depth of field in which only the eye is sharp and the sand below the eye. I used an aperture of f/2.8. Some photographers like this look where a single feature, or a narrow plane, is sharp and the rest of the image is blurred. I do this once in a while, but when photographing macro subjects I think it’s much more impressive and visually compelling to see all of their intriguing and beautiful detail with tack sharp clarity. Besides, anyone can blur a picso your
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ture. That takes no talent or skill. Capturing extensive depth of field with small subjects is a different story. Depth of field strategies 1. Small lens aperture. We all know that a small lens aperture means increased depth of field. But there are ramifications of using, say, f/22 or f/32. First, so much light is reduced that one of three things has to happen to compensate for this light loss.
