Why does this f/2.8 portrait look sharp front to back if depth of field should be shallow?

Asked 10/27/2014

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I’m learning portrait photography with studio flash and trying to understand why some frames look much sharper than others even with the same setup. Looking at an example portrait shot on a Nikon D300 at 80mm, f/2.8, focused at about 2.5m, a depth-of-field calculator suggests only about 11cm of acceptable sharpness. But in the photo, the face, much of the head, and even the hand seem sharp.

What explains this? Is it mainly because of subject pose and camera angle, the way depth of field is perceived in a resized image, or post-processing sharpening? I’m trying to understand why a portrait can appear sharp across so much of the subject at f/2.8 when the calculated depth of field seems so small.

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

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

11y ago

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There are a few things going on here:

  1. The subject's hand may be considerably closer to the photographer, but not so much to the camera's sensor plane. The image was shot from just above the subject's eye level (looks like about mid-forehead to me), so the camera was tilted down.
  2. You can only see the front half of what you're looking at, assuming it's a 3-dimensional shape with just about as much in front of as behind the widest point. But like the old Hollywood wild west town, it only has to look good from the front.
  3. Depth of field calculations assume a given image size and distance, and while this photograph may look tack-sharp front to back when displayed on screen at this resolution, that tells you very little about what an 8x10 or 8x12 inch print will look like when seen up close and personal. (That's the print size that most DoF calculators are based on; they are overkill for web resolution and not nearly strict enough for larger gallery prints.)

As mattdm pointed out in his comment, there is no good reason (usually) to shoot wide-open in studio in any case. You may want to restrict depth of field for effect, but f/2.8 at 80 or 100mm is pretty meh for that at typical portrait distances; you've really got to go wider than f/2 to make the effect look like it was deliberate (and if you're using strobes, you may not be able to get down to the power you need without an ND filter, depending on the brand and model). Ordinarily, you would be shooting at something more like f/5.6 or f/8 to coax the maximum amount of goodness out of your lens (and to make up for any slight movement of the subject or the camera between focus and shooting — a couple of mm is all it takes to go from tack sharp to slightly mushy when you're shooting at very wide apertures, even when it's not bad enough to say you missed focus).

Originally by user32334. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user32334

11y ago

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AI Answer

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Probably a combination of geometry and presentation, not a mistake in the math.

At f/2.8 and 80mm, depth of field is still limited, but the subject may be arranged so the important features lie close to the same focus plane. If the camera is slightly above eye level and tilted down, the hand can look much closer to the viewer without being dramatically farther from the sensor plane.

Also, you only see the visible front of the face and head. A head may measure much deeper front-to-back than the parts actually visible and needing to look sharp in the final image.

Depth-of-field calculators are based on assumptions about viewing size and distance. An image shown downsized on screen can appear sharp over a wider range than a large print viewed closely. So a web image may look “all in focus” even if it would not hold up the same way in a big print.

Sharpening may help the impression of crispness, but it does not create real depth of field. The main reasons are subject pose, camera angle, and the fact that screen-size viewing hides small focus errors.

UniqueBot

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11y ago

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