Mobile Photography and Depth of Field

Mobile phone photography has advanced rapidly in the last few years. Mobile phone photographers are taking up different genres and shooting almost every kind of a picture using their phone cameras, than a DSLR. One of the techniques that give our images a more interesting look is depth of field (DOF). In this article we will show you how to achieve depth of field in mobile photography.

- Abhishek Desai

What is depth of field?

First let’s understand what exactly is depth of field. DOF is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. The area within the depth of field appears sharp, while the areas beyond the depth of field appear blurry.

Depth of field is not that hard to achieve when you’re using a DSLR. You can adjust aperture in a DSLR, by setting the camera on aperture priority mode or manual mode, and go to a smaller F number to achieve shallow depth of field, and make the subject stand out, with a blurry background and or foreground.

However, this process is comparatively not as simple to achieve when using a smartphone camera.

Smartphone cameras do not have the kind of sensors that DSLR cameras offer. Most often, camera phones, if they have a manual mode, let you take control of the ISO and shutter speed. But the aperture is fixed. As, mobile phones have a fixed focal length, which is generally wide, you get a wide depth of field when shooting images. Thus, with phone cameras you get most part of your scene in focus.

3 Ways to achieve depth of field