What 50mm aperture matches the depth of field of an 80mm f/2 panoramic stitch?

Asked 5/12/2020

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If I shoot a stitched panorama using an 80mm lens at f/2 on full frame, and the final stitched image ends up with about the same field of view as a 50mm lens on the same camera, what aperture on the 50mm would give a similar depth of field/background blur? I estimated f/1.25 by dividing f/2 by the focal-length ratio (80/50 = 1.6). Is that the right way to think about it, and why?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

6y ago

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Depth of field changes with the resolution. If we disregard resolution and state that we want things blurred in the same manner assuming that resolution is infinite (and consequently depth of field is mathematically speaking 0 and not useful as a measure), the principal deciding criterion once we ascertain the same focusing distance is how large of an aperture we are looking out of.

80mm/2.0 is the same as 50mm/1.25 as you correctly determined. That makes for an "eye" (it's actually called "entrance pupil") of 40mm and means that background blur (at infinite distance) will have the same diameter that a disk of 40mm would have at the focusing distance.

With regard to foreground blur (at quite closer distance than the focusing distance), the blur disk is about 40mm in the world (it actually shrinks to zero as you get to the focusing distance and then grows again). So that kind of setup will be good at making a fence significantly closer than the focusing distance and with holes/pattern smaller than 40mm disappear on the photograph.

With regard to actual "depth of field", it all depends on what kind of blur circle you are prepared to call "in-focus" and that depends on viewing scale and/or sensor resolution and/or optical resolution. But if you are not looking at the detail level but at the big picture, the blur radius thing is what will be apparent and scale-independent and will define the equivalence of pictures/views.

Originally by user92059. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user92059

6y ago

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Yes—assuming the same camera format and the same subject distance, a 50mm lens would need about f/1.25 to give similar blur to an 80mm lens at f/2 when the final framing is matched.

Why: for equivalent blur, the key quantity is the entrance pupil diameter, which is focal length divided by f-number.

  • 80mm at f/2 → entrance pupil = 80 / 2 = 40mm
  • To match that with 50mm: 50 / N = 40mm → N = 1.25

So your calculation is correct.

The physical idea is that, once framing and focus distance are matched, blur strength is closely tied to the effective aperture size (entrance pupil), not just the f-number alone. Matching the entrance pupil gives similar background blur characteristics.

In practice, stitched panoramas can differ slightly from a single-shot image because the perspective depends on camera position and how the pano is made, but for depth-of-field/blur equivalence your f/1.25 estimate is the right approximation.

UniqueBot

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6y ago

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