Depth of Field

Having been making use of shallow depth of field in a few indoor blips lately, I was reminded of some of the stuff we did at college with a large format view camera, using the different movements to mess about with the plane of focus. In one direction, using the Scheimpflug principle, it is possible to create a plane of focus at an angle to the camera lens. Normally, with lens and film/sensor parallel, taking a image of an object that is not parallel to the camera will show the effect of a shallow depth of field. With a view camera it is possible to change the angle of lens or film to allow the whole of a long, thin object, such as an album, to be in focus. Which is why I took All Mod Cons into the studio one day to try it out. Conversely, by tilting in the opposite direction it is possible to artificially reduce the depth of field for creative reasons, the technique used in so-called 'tilt-shift' that makes real world scenes look like a model.