Too Shallow Depth of Field

Usually I try to only show my best work to people, even my friends and family, and that definitely goes for this blog as well. However, today I thought I'd show a mistake I made yesterday and hopefully by me talking about it, you won't make the same mistake. Thankfully this was not a picture for a client, but just for me.

I needed a picture of Ainsley and Braxton together for a small frame that is actually a Christmas tree ornament. So I took the kids outside and quickly snapped some shots. I grabbed my 85mm 1.8 because I usually like that lens for portraits. Here's the picture (make sure to click on the picture for a larger view):



Man, that could have been a great picture. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get both of them to look at the camera at the same time? Not to mention they both look happy!

So what's wrong with this picture? The problem is that although Ainsley is tack sharp, Braxton is way too soft and out of focus. How did this happen? If you follow my photography, you know that I like to shoot wide open 95% of the time. Which is to say that I shoot with the biggest aperture (smallest number) possible with whatever lens I am using. So for this shot, I was at f/1.8 and 1.8 is very shallow. In fact, it is too shallow for a portrait of more than one person, especially if the two people are not exactly on the same plane horizontally. When we sat them down in the grass, they were back to back, but Braxton rarely sits still for more than .3 seconds. In this case, Braxton is just a little bit in front of Ainsley and I focused on Ainsley's eye which put Braxton out of focus. So when shooting multiple people, make sure you have an aperture chosen with enough depth of field to keep everyone in focus as best as possible.

Most of you probably already knew that, but what you may not know, is that f/1.8 may have actually worked for this shot, but my focus was in the wrong place. Let me explain. Depth of field falls off much faster forward than it does backward. Meaning from the point of focus, the depth of field stretches a little further backward than forward. So, if I would have focused on Braxton instead of Ainsley, Ainsley would not have been as out of focus as Braxton is when focusing on Ainsley. I hope this makes sense.

So when shooting a portrait of two people with a wide aperture, it is a good practice to put your focus on the most forward subject. If the other person is still too soft, then decrease your aperture until they are sharp enough for you.