When I am out with the big white 100-400mm lens I often get remarks or questions from those with consumer zooms or point in shoot cameras. One of the most common questions at kids baseball games is “how can I shoot through the fence and not get the fence grid”? I decided to try what I thought was the answer and achieved fairly good results. Understanding Depth of field and its relationship to your target and the fence is critical.

The basics:

• Set your aperture to its widest opening - f4 or f2.8. This will minimize the depth of field or focus distance.
• Stand back from the fence byt at least 3 feet. This will make the fence blurred.
• Focus at or beyond your subject, but make sure the subject is in focus. If you are not sure where the subject will be, prefocus on a specific area and wait for the subject to appear there.

Why this works
The illustration below shows how depth of field limits the sharply in focus areas of an image. The further you are from the point of focus, the blurrier the image becomes. Thus the metal fence becomes lost in the blur of its closeness.

Standing back from the fence makes sure that the squares are small enough
that their blur is not evident. Depending on your camera sensor/film, lens, and lighting you may be able to completely eliminate the fence or you may have a soft image.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 1st, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.