Exercise 2.4: Woodpecker

The brief for this exercise is to find a subject in front of a background with depth. Take a very close viewpoint and zoom in; you’ll need to be aware of the minimum focusing distance of your lens. Focus on the subject and take a single shot. Then, without changing the focal length or framing, set your focus to infinity and take a second shot.

As you review the two shots, how does the point of focus structure the composition? With a shallow depth of field the point of focus naturally draws the eye, which goes first of all to the part of the image that’s sharp.

Again without moving the camera, select a very small aperture (perhaps one stop above the minimum to avoid diffraction) and find a point of focus that will give you acceptable sharpness throughout the entire field, from foreground to infinity. Take a third shot and add it to the first two to make a set.

Initial Attempt

All of the images above were taken using a lens set to a focal length of 35mm. Images 1 and 2 used f/11 while image 3 used f/5.6.

I realised as I started writing this up that I’d used the wrong aperture and should have been using something around f/25. An initial retry at the required 3rd image was made, but light levels were such that a tripod and extended exposure times were needed to capture an image with it being very difficult to confirm that the image was in focus. This initial try did show a greater depth of field in the images as can be seen below.

Final Images

The key takeaway for me with regards to this exercise is, to remember which way round the apertures go, i.e. larger numbers are smaller apertures which give greater depth of field. Smaller numbers are bigger apertures and give shallower depth of field.