From the course: Photography Foundations: Exposure (part 2)

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Other depth of field factors

Other depth of field factors

From the course: Photography Foundations: Exposure (part 2)

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Other depth of field factors

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- Wider apertures make for shallower depth of field, but aperture is not the only thing that affects the depth of field in your image. Sensor size, the distance to your subject and the size of the objects in the background of your image, all have a bearing on how soft the background will go. Smaller sensors have inherently deeper depth of field than larger sensors. This has nothing to do with sensor technology, it's just a fact of the physics of optics. Smaller pieces of film also have inherently deeper depth of field than larger pieces of film. Here's a portrait shot with two different size sensors. I shot this with an iPhone. It's got a tiny smartphone camera sized sensor in it, it has a fixed aperture and it has a very particular focal length, that is it has a lens of a particular length. Here's a portrait shot from the same position with a Canon 5D Mark IV. It has a sensor that's the size of a 35 millimeter piece of film, that's dramatically larger than the sensor that's inside…

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