BA Hons Photography (Contemporary Practice): what we used in depth of field workshop

Before we started the workshop, I learnt depending on the chosen aperture (f-stop), the focal length and the focus distance have a certain depth-of-field. The depth of filed defines a zone around the chosen focus point where objects appear to be sharp. Beyond the this zone objects appear to be blurred.

Before we used the cameras we had to set up our lighting equipment. Today we used a studio flash and a soft box. When using, I learnt studio flash is a much stronger light then using studio light. the shadows appeared darker creating lighter highlights on the subject. From experimenting, I enjoyed learning about this light and was ambitions to try again.

Using the soft box helped create our final outcome as the equipment created even and diffused light. When setting up the equipment I noticed the sides and back of the box were displayed with a bright surface – this could either have been a fabric surface or aluminium foil. This allowed the equipment to act as an efficient reflector. The soft box could be used either with flash or continuous light, for instance today we used studio flash.

As we learnt form out first induction, that the camera's aperture controls the amount of light that reaches the film. we wanted to experiment with different types of aperture, to emphasize depth of field. One of the apertures we used was f2 wide aperture, as this created a shallow depth-of-field. We wanted to emphasize the sharp focused area as small, as this was useful when we wanted to isolate the subject of our picture, while capturing other elements as out of focus. We also experimented with a small aperture, of f16. This increased the depth-of-field which meant more elements in the picture, from foreground to background, where in sharp focus. By using this type of aperture the image created more depth drawing the viewer into the picture.

As we were using a horseman camera, we had ground class screen, which allowed us to see the picture as up side down. I found this aspect interesting and enjoyable, and was intrigued to learn more. After our black and white test shots, we then processed them to see if we had created depth of field. Unfortunately I was unable to process them, so need further practice in that area. After viewing our negatives, we then shot our colour dark slides.

To gain perfect focus we also used a loop tool. This helped emphasize the correct amount of depth, contrast and focus. Before taking our colour shoot we also used `quick disk`. This enabled us to determine the correct amount of exposure. The use of the QuickDisk involved no calculation, it was light weight, easy to replace and free for personal use. Not only could we emphasize the exposure but we also could measure the largest visible diameter. The set consisted of pieces of cardboard, the disk and the measuring tape. This tool was particular useful especially when photographing small objects on a large format camera.