In my morning troll through the Pentax forums at DPReview (still lusting, wanting, and learning all I can about my object of desire without actually buying one (yet)), I found some interesting articles on Depth of Field, and in particular, how it relates to digital cameras.
- Depth of Field tutorial and explanation
- DOF and digital cameras
- More on depth of field and digital cameras
Basically if you’ve ever wondered why your digital camera seems to put everything in focus, not allowing you to get nifty effects like the ones below (taken on my 35mm Pentax), even with the apateur wide open, the above might help to explain. It’s got math too, if you happen to like that 🙂 Basically it’s got to do with the size of the surface capturing the image, as well as the lense, etc etc.
(Pentax P30T, 50mm F1.7 lense, F1.7 with unrecorded exposure, three closeup lenses on)
I think the quick and dirty answer is that if you have a nice D-SLR with a magnification factor of say, 1.5x (ie: a 50mm lense on a 35mm camera acts like a 75mm lense on your D-SLR), the depth of field is magnified the same way. Or something like that.