F

4 depth of field
20

Position your Nikon and focus

on a subject in the middle
distance. Set aperture priority
Mins
exposure mode. Now take a
series of images going from the widest
available aperture on your lens to the
smallest, in whole stops, ensuring that
the focus doesnt alter between each
shot. a typical sequence for this will be
f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16 and f/22.
enlarge the images on your cameras
LCD or on your computer. Check that
the subject that you focused on is
sharp, and then look at objects behind
and in front of it. the results you get
will depend on the focal length of your
lens and the distance between the
subject and the camera, but in our shots
both the background and foreground
subjects are blurred at f/4 and f/5.8. at
f/8 the ruined church is almost sharp,
but the foreground subjects are very
soft, while at f/11 the church is sharp.
the foreground doesnt become fully
sharp until f/22.

iso100

iso1600

iso6400

f/4

f/11

f/22

iso25600

5 learN about iso

With your Nikon fixed in position on a tripod, select
aperture priority exposure mode, and select an
aperture thats narrow enough to keep the whole
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scene in focus (around f/8 or f/11 if youre using
the wide setting on your standard zoom lens). take a test
exposure at the lowest ISO.
Now take a series of images moving from the lowest ISO to
the highest, doubling the value for each step. So if your Nikon
has a lowest ISO of 100 youll have a sequence of images at
100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and so on. Remember that changing
the ISO will affect the shutter speed if you use aperturepriority exposure mode, so any moving subjects may be
recorded differently during the sequence. You can assess the
noise introduced by different ISOs by zooming in on the same
area of each image to check how much noise is visible.

10

clo se-up s aNd dep th of f ield

The aperture isnt the only setting on your Nikon that will
affect the depth of field in your images. The distance from your
camera to the subject will also have a bearing on which areas
of the scene are sharp and which are blurred. With closeups youll find that the depth of field is much smaller than
when youre shooting at longer distances, so you can also try
repeating the depth of field exercise, but with a smaller subject,
and focusing as close as possible with your standard zoom.