I’ve been playing around this week with my new Pentax K-7 shooting a range of images to use to illustrate Depth of Field for an article I’m writing. I’ve also been drawing pictures to illustrate Hyper-focal distance – I love my job!
As I was trawling the web I found the DOF Master website which calculates all things hyper-focal and DOF.
There you can calculate the depth of field required for various situations – simply select your camera and the focal length of the lens that you are using. So, for example, if you have a 28 – 200 lens and are planning to shoot at 100 mm, then select 100 mm for the focal length. Select the f stop that you intend to shoot at at for that focal distance. Then select the distance between you and the subject and click Calculate.
So, for example, for my Pentax K7, shooting at 100 mm with f/5.6 at a subject 10 feet away, the depth of field is approximately .67 feet and the hyper-focal distance would be 290 feet.
If you’re using a fixed focal length lens, then there is also an online depth of field table available on that site. Select the focal length of your lens and the camera that you are using and click Calculate – you’ll get a printable table showing the near and far range of the depth of field at a given distance and aperture, as well as the hyper-focal distance. How cool is that?