What does Canon A-DEP mode do, and when is it useful?
Asked 2/20/2015
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On Canon cameras such as the EOS 600D/T3i, what is A-DEP mode designed to do? In what situations is it helpful, and is it mainly related to low light, high ISO, or slow shutter speeds?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
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The purpose of A-DEP is explained in the manual (page 101):
Objects in the foreground and background will be in focus automatically. All the AF points will function to detect the subject, and the aperture required to attain the necessary depth of field will be set automatically.
Or in other words, it's useful when you don't know what aperture to set in order to get everything in focus - it lets the camera analyze the scene, pick out the "interesting" objects and then choose the right depth of field.
That's the theory anyway. In my experience, what it tends to do is analyze the scene, pick the wrong objects and give me a photo with a wonderfully sharp tree, only slightly ruined by the blurry person standing in front of it, so I'll tend to avoid A-DEP mode along with anything else where the camera chooses the active focus points.
Originally by user11371. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user11371
11y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
A-DEP stands for Automatic Depth of Field. Its purpose is to help get both foreground and background subjects in focus by using all AF points to detect subjects and then automatically selecting an aperture that should provide enough depth of field.
In practice, it’s meant for situations where you want “everything” in focus but aren’t sure what aperture to choose yourself. It is not specifically a low-light, high-ISO, or slow-shutter mode. Those settings may still be affected as a side effect, because choosing a smaller aperture often requires slower shutter speeds and/or higher ISO depending on the light.
The main limitation is that the camera decides which subjects matter based on the AF points. If it picks the wrong objects, the result may not match what you wanted in focus. Because of that, many photographers prefer to control aperture directly rather than rely on A-DEP.
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