{"id":20259,"date":"2013-11-28T06:03:55","date_gmt":"2013-11-28T13:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=20259"},"modified":"2013-11-28T06:03:55","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T13:03:55","slug":"a-white-crowned-sparrow-and-the-effect-of-depth-of-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/28\/a-white-crowned-sparrow-and-the-effect-of-depth-of-field\/","title":{"rendered":"A White-crowned Sparrow And The Effect Of Depth Of Field"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago I found this juvenile White-crowned Sparrow\u00a0sunning itself in a\u00a0wild rose-bush at Farmington Bay.\u00a0 It was a cold morning (you can see frost on the perch behind the bird) and due to the frigid temperature the sparrow wasn’t flitting around much so I did a little experimentation with depth of field.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000. f\/5.6, ISO 500 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As I looked at the bird through the viewfinder I wondered if the rose leaves in the background would look best as sharp as I could get them or as out of focus as possible.\u00a0 I knew they were in an intermediate position where I wouldn’t be able to get them either\u00a0tack sharp or completely soft and featureless but I had a cooperative bird\u00a0so I decided to play with my options and see what I liked best.<\/p>\n

With my gear (including attached tc) the narrowest depth of field I can get is at f\/5.6.\u00a0which makes sharpness fall away fast behind the sparrow.\u00a0 Since the bird is turned sideways to me even the tail is in the same plane as the rest of the body and is sharp.\u00a0 The background leaves are quite soft which helps to focus attention on the sharp bird.<\/p>\n

If I’d removed my tc, the effect of a shorter focal length and<\/em> being able to shoot at f\/4 instead of f\/5.6 would have rendered the leaves even more out of focus but the sparrow would have been smaller in the frame and\u00a0had less detail.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/320. f\/13, ISO 500 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

So I decided to see how much depth of field I could get at f\/13.\u00a0 As you can see by comparing the two images it made a significant difference in the sharpness of the background leaves\u00a0but they’re still far from tack sharp.\u00a0 I could have gone to something like f\/16 for even more background sharpness but that would have destroyed my shutter speed – notice that it’s already dropped from 1\/2000 to 1\/320 with this change in aperture (I shoot in aperture priority).<\/p>\n

I suppose which effect one prefers is a matter of taste (if it matters much\u00a0at all).\u00a0 Personally in this instance I prefer the DOF in the second image.\u00a0 I also prefer the bird in the second shot because of slightly better light on the\u00a0back of the sparrow and a bit more of a head turn that provides better eye contact.<\/p>\n

Sorry about the “photo-geekiness” of this post.\u00a0 When I begin composing a new post I never really know where I’ll end up and this time\u00a0it turned out to be photography technique which will likely have more appeal for some than it will for others.<\/p>\n

I hope each and every one of you has a wonderful (and safe)\u00a0Thanksgiving with\u00a0family and friends and that the holiday season provides you with many fond memories that will last a lifetime.<\/p>\n

As for me, I’m hoping to photograph some birds this morning before I eat one later in the day…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two days ago I found this juvenile White-crowned Sparrow sunning itself in a wild rose-bush at Farmington Bay. It was a cold morning (you can see frost on the perch behind the bird) and due to the frigid temperature the sparrow wasn’t flitting around much so I did a little experimentation with depth of field.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,350],"tags":[33,1637,105,397,692,190,278,453,325,1663],"class_list":["post-20259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-white-crowned-sparrows","tag-aperture","tag-camera-settings","tag-depth-of-field","tag-farmington-bay","tag-focal-length","tag-juvenile","tag-sharpness","tag-teleconverter","tag-white-crowned-sparrow","tag-zonotrichia-leucophrys"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/white-crowned-sparrow-5229-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5gL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}