Depth of Field Tables for Digital Cameras

[TonyW]

In the old days of 35mm film cameras it was easy to find depth of field tables which are critical for determining the distances that will be acceptably in focus at various lens apertures and focal lengths. It even used to be indicated on lenses.

It got harder with digital cameras since the sensors are different sizes and sensor size makes a huge difference to depth of field.

I've been looking for a handy table for a while and even wrote my own spreadsheet to calculate them for my camera.

Then I finally found a good on-line one that lets you select your specific camera, plug in the lens focal length (actual NOT 35mm equivalent) and if you don't happen to know it has look up tables for a whole range of digital cameras - from compact to SLR's.

You can find it, along with some good explanations of how depth of field works at:

http://www.dofmaster.com/doftable.html

Tony

[Chuck S.]

Tony, great link - thanks!



Chuck

[MikeH]

Hi Tony,

Great... what a useful site... thanks for posting this...

Mike

[Kathy]

Hi Tony,

Thank you so much for sharing.

I am making an effort to understand my camera and this will be a great help.

Kathy

[Carbone]

Thanks a lot! Very helpful

Ray

[Chuck S.]

By the way, that site also has a downloadable DOF calculator for a Palm OS PDA. Grant had previously let me know about this one, and I've installed it on my PDA. So now when I'm contemplating a photo in the field, I can use the DOF calculator for precision... Of course, that would mean I would have to take my camera out of Program mode....

[Carbone]

Chuck...

Just two notches down, stop at the Av... you'll see, it's fairly simple

Ray

[Chuck S.]

Ray, thanks....for me, it needs to be very simple...!