How to Get Good Perspective and Depth of Field with a Digital Camera

Out of the many features that a digital camera comes with, one that we particularly take into account is the power and quality of the lens. However, not everyone understands what is it that can be achieved by using a lens to its best. The difference between telephoto and wide angle lenses is not just about magnification. To use your lenses in the best way possible, you need to know how the influence perspective and depth of field.

It is common knowledge that a telephoto lens enlarges all the objects in the photo. However, when you use the telephoto lens, you also reduce depth of field by removing the background. This is a good way to eliminate any source of distraction from the subject. There are two results of using a telephoto lens: you minimize the amount of background by narrowing the field and you get a small depth of field, ensuring that the background is out of focus. So when you take photos of people or animals, the best option is to use the telephoto lens or zoom in with the zoom lens. You will get a three dimensional impression, making the subject emerge sharply and clearly from the blurred background.

A wide-angle lens, on the other hand, does the complete opposite. It not only makes everything look smaller, but has a much wider angle, as the name says, and the depth of field is much increased. You will not only see more background, but it will be a lot more focused. This is why this lens is not a good option for portraits, as the background will distract the viewer's attention from the subject. Instead, it works great for landscape photos, especially if you have objects both in the background and foreground that you want to focus on.

The other thing you take into account when choosing the lens is perspective. The concept is very hard to explain without images, but let's give it a shot. Imagine watching a cricket game on TV. In a close-up image of the batsman, the wicket-keeper seems right behind him while the crowd is just a little further back. On a side-on view, you notice that the wicket-keeper is actually about 10 meters away from the batsman and the viewers are approx. 60 meters further back. This happens because the telephoto lens makes subjects look much closer to one another, compressing the natural perspective. The same thing will happen if you take a landscape shot.

Imagine that you are photographing a tree and a mountain range further away. If you use the telephoto lens and take the shot from distance, the tree will seem very close to the mountains, because the lens also enlarges the mountains. If you take the same photo with a wide angle lens standing closer, the tree will take up the same amount of space, but when you reduce the scene so that the tree fits in the frame, the background also appears smaller... and therefore further away. So the wide-angle lens has the opposite effect of the telephoto lens, augmenting perspective and making the objects appear further apart.

In simple terms, the outputs of these two lenses is this: the wide-angle lens makes the foreground more prominent, reducing the background and making it seem more distant. The telephoto lens makes the background more prominent and larger. So just changing your lens can deeply affect the impact of your pictures. You can control not only the way the viewer views the subject, but also the surroundings. You cannot get the whole idea without photos, so why not try these things out right now?

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