From the course: Photography 101

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Depth-of-field preview

Depth-of-field preview

From the course: Photography 101

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Depth-of-field preview

- In an earlier video, I explained what aperture was and how aperture changes your depth of field. The problem is that when you're shooting and adjusting your aperture, you can't necessarily see that depth of field changing until after you take the picture. That is of course, unless you understand how to use the depth-of-field preview function on your camera. Let's start with one of the older cameras. This is a Canon 5D Mark II, so pretty old by today's standards. And it has a dedicated depth-of-field preview button on it at the bottom left, right next to the lens. This button is unmarked. And you'll find on Nikon cameras it's usually on the other side but it's the same thing, also unmarked. When I push that button what happens is the aperture actually stops down restricting the amount of light that comes into the lens. The effect of that though, is that I see through the viewfinder what that shot is going to look like. I'll actually see a greater depth of field if I'm stopping it…

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