Tuesday, 15 November 2016

What is Depth Of Field bracketing?


I understand the concept of (auto-)bracketing, in general. And I understand that exposure bracketing is used for HDR and focus bracketing is used for focus stacking. But I am unable to imagine what DOF bracketing is or what its use could be. Any pointers?



Answer



DoF bracketing is essentially the same as focus bracketing, but rather than change the focus point/plane for each shot, you change the aperture to vary the depth of field.


Imagine you are taking a shot of, say, a cluster of cherry blossoms. You want the background blurred so you open the aperture right up. But this means only part of the cluster is in focus. So you stop down the aperture a little, which gives you deeper DoF, so more of the flowers are in focus, and so on.


Once you've got the shots you need to get the entire cluster in focus, you can put them all together in post - sharp flower cluster and blurred background. Bracketing in small increments means you can get a nice transition between the fore and backgrounds. If you just took one at f/2.8 and another at f/16 it would be tricky to get a natural looking result.


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