My Lack of Depth

Point and Shoot. Finally getting somewhere understanding how to take more sophisticated pictures with my little camera.

I'm always impressed how people take pictures that show depth and dimensions. Some of my pics are not too bad (lucky shots), but I always feel that my pics lack something. It's like playing a nice piece of music but with the wrong instrument -- something just doesn't seem right.

I have asked James, my professional- photographing brother, how to take pictures that are both focused and blurry. He tried explaining HOW to me many times. It's called Depth of Field (DOF) and it has to do with apertures, light, focal lengths, blah, blah, blah... Huh? I usually get more confused afterward.

How Deep Does This Get?

#1 F-numbers (f-stops) are in reverse order of the aperture size. Increasing f-stop means decreasing aperture.

#2 Smaller apertures increase DOF. Conversely, larger apertures decrease DOF.

But remember...

#3 More (deep) DOF means all will be in focus, where as less (shallow) DOF means only the main subject is in focus resulting in more artistic pictures.

What Does It Mean? In this case, SHALLOW is more sophisticated than DEEP I gather...

I thought I was hopelessly lost. Perhaps auto mode is all I can handle. However, something magically happened today -- something clicked in my brain and this DOF thing all of a sudden made sense to me!

So, take a look at the pics taken with my newly acquired knowledge today. What do you think? Did I get my shallow DOF?

I owe my new found knowledge to this web site: www.digicamhelp.com.

Now, onward to figuring out shutter speeds and ISOs...

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T