achieving depth of field... CC please

[tinkerbell]

1.

2.

3.

4.

what can i improve on???

 

[reznap]

Honestly, I would try and find more simple and isolated subject matter. These photos are very busy. As landscape shots they don't hold up (#1 is framed too low, #2 too high, #3 too low and #4 too tight). If you want to have a photo of a boat as the subject, it should, ideally, stand out against its surroundings. The easiest way to achieve that would be to find a boat in the open water and focus on that, use the rule of thirds for your composition and voila.. usually a nice photo.

I'm not sure what you meant by your title 'achieving depth of field' though. All of these shots have a very deep depth of field, meaning most of the photo is in focus.

 

[tinkerbell]

thanks for your feedback... i like that you pointed out that there is too much going on in my photos. i was meaning for the title to be a question instead of a statement. i guess i did a good job on focusing???

 

[OrionsByte]

thanks for your feedback... i like that you pointed out that there is too much going on in my photos. i was meaning for the title to be a question instead of a statement. i guess i did a good job on focusing???

What specifically were you trying to achieve? I took a peek at the EXIF data:

You shot #1 in Shutter Priority at a pretty low shutter speed (EXIF says 1/49 which is kind of odd). For a scene like this, you would have been better off shooting in Aperture Priority so you could control the depth of field. Shutter Priority would mainly be used to control how action is captured (i.e. motion blur or no motion blur), and since there's not much action in this shot, it's not your best choice.

For #2 you did switch to Aperture Priority, which is good, and you shot at f/5.6, which is probably a good choice for this subject. However, I don't know how far the boats were from you, but it would probably be hard to achieve a blurred background from where you were standing, especially with a point-and-shoot. I'm not sure if that's what you were going for or not.

In #3 you were in Landscape mode, so you weren't really controlling anything here, so there's not much to say about settings. What I will say is that with the boats in the distance and the birds in the foreground, you really need to pick a subject. The birds are a bit soft, and if you'd shot it in Aperture Priority at a large aperture, you might have been able to blur the background a bit to really make the birds pop. That can sometimes be difficult with a point-and-shoot though.

 

[enzodm]

Recent thread on the same subject: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...allery/231368-disappointed-need-guidance.html

 

[tinkerbell]

I'm not sure if that's what you were going for or not.

i was mostly experimenting on focusing both background and foreground. how can distance from the subjects affect the exposure?

would have been better off shooting in Aperture Priority so you could control the depth of field

i wanted to find out how shutter priority can deliver compared to apperture priority...

i still have ways to go with the exposure triangle.

 

[enzodm]

I'm not sure if that's what you were going for or not.

i was mostly experimenting on focusing both background and foreground. how can distance from the subjects affect the exposure?

would have been better off shooting in Aperture Priority so you could control the depth of field

i wanted to find out how shutter priority can deliver compared to apperture priority...

i still have ways to go with the exposure triangle.

shutter priority and aperture priority lead both to some equivalent setting, however with shutter priority you choose speed, and expect aperture to be adjusted accordingly (because you are not interested in it); vice versa for aperture priority. As what you want depends on aperture, go with Av.
Anyway, I see you want greater depth of field, so disregard the link I've put, which is for the opposite, although it tells generally useful things. For Greater depth of field, just choose smaller apertures (i.e., larger Fnumber).

 

[3bayjunkie]

if you want more depth of field you need to focus on something closer. also try using your longest lens and lowest f/stop.

 

[changoleon]

Just keep shooting!!!!

 

[Edsport]

if you want more depth of field you need to focus on something closer. also try using your longest lens and lowest f/stop.

I think you mean less depth of field...

 

[Eemilioc]

I think you are doing great on DOF, maybe exposure and composition need more attention on these ones.