Of course, the title of this post is a bit misleading. ND Filters on your lens, of and by themselves, do not affect depth of field. What they do affect if the amount of light coming through your lens, potentially reducing it so much that you may need to use a large aperture in the bright sunny outdoors. Large aperture means shallow depth of field. Et voilà!

But what type and how many ND Filters do you use?

David Hobby over at the Strobist has it all carefully explained.

Read the tutorial at: Strobist.

Lots of you have upgraded from a point-and-shoot digicam to a DSLR lately — and probably still shooting in the Green Heart, Intelligent AUTO, and other Easy modes (we’ll just call them “AUTO” here). Basically, admit it, you’re hesitant to use your DSLR to its full potential — and advance your photography skills up one notch. Don’t worry, we’re all like that when we start out, so you’re in good company.

Fear not, today we will hold your hand and help you switch that Mode Dial to A, the Aperture-Priority AE mode, the mode probably used by most professional photographers.

We promise you won’t mess any settings up on your DSLR and, if you are not convinced by the end of this tutorial, we’ll let you revert back to your trusty AUTO mode. OK? So, if you’re ready, let’s go!

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Controlling depth of field simply means controlling how much of your scene is in focus and how much is blurred. One way to do that is to use a large aperture to obtain a shallow depth of field (only subject in focus is sharp, background is thrown nicely out of focus; great for portraits) and a small aperture to maximize depth of field (everything from near to far is in sharp focus; great for landscapes). But did you know there are two other ways you can affect depth of field? Brian Auer explains.

Read the tutorialat: Epic Edits.

[ via Steve's Digicams ]

Most beginner photographers rate a digital camera by scrutinizing a picture taken by the camera to see how sharp it is. Sharpness is prized for good reasons and yet it is often important to be able to throw the background out of focus to get maximum impact from a photograph. We do that by using a shallow deapth-of-field.

Shelton Muller of Total Image magazine (www.total-image.com.au) explains depth-of-field and demonstrates how to use depth-of-field to your advantage when taking portraits.