DOF Simulator

[Out to Lunch]

I stumbled onto this free cool app. DOF simulator - Camera depth of field calculator with visual background blur and bokeh simulation. Cheers, OtL

 

[jankap]

Try to find a Lytro Illum camera. Herewith you can change the DOF of a taken picture in postprocessing.

 

[Retro-Grouch]

Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, there was this concept of "knowing one's craft". You chose the settings for a picture based on your knowledge of how that would translate into the final image. Just banging away, with the intent of "fixing it in post", will never seem, to me, to be a legitimate approach. But then, I'm old, and a grouch. YMMV. I'm also, as an old grouch, flame-proof, so have at it!

 

[Out to Lunch]

To clarify, the DOF Simulator shows you DOF with a variety of lenses, f stops, and sensor sizes. Nothing to do with fixing things in post. Maybe even dinosaurs would enjoy it. Cheers, OtL.

 

[Retro-Grouch]

To clarify, the DOF Simulator shows you DOF with a variety of lenses, f stops, and sensor sizes. Nothing to do with fixing things in post. Maybe even dinosaurs would enjoy it. Cheers, OtL.

I get that part. A bit like pulling a Polaroid (back in the Jurassic), and I can certainly see the value of the DOF simulator, perhaps even more so for cinematographers. My beef is with the Lytro or AI programs that allow you to "create" out-of-focus backgrounds, etc., or even entire images out of thin air, pixelated aether, or whatever.

 

[Out to Lunch]

Ah, OK. I get it. I recently had to upgrade my ACDSee software -I don't use LR, and their latest offerings include a version with lots of AI. Not for me and so I went for the non-AI version, instead. Cheers, OtL

 

[Godfrey]

To clarify, the DOF Simulator shows you DOF with a variety of lenses, f stops, and sensor sizes. Nothing to do with fixing things in post. Maybe even dinosaurs would enjoy it. Cheers, OtL.

I use various FoV and DoF apps to learn things about my lens's capabilities and behaviors. But ... I never look at these things when I'm preparing to go shooting or while I'm out shooting. I rely on what I know about a particular lens from using it a lot, and work the aperture to manipulate the DoF to get what I want.

They're good tools and worth playing with if the concepts aperture and DoF are somewhat new to you, or if you haven't owned a lens of some particular focal length for whatever format you're using now might be. I consider them teaching tools.

G

 

[jankap]

We understand, that there is only one really sharpest plane? Sometimes this plane is spherically curved.
Nearer to and farther from the camera the sharpness decreases gradually.
So DOF has to be taken with a grain of salt.😋

 

[Godfrey]

We understand, that there is only one really sharpest plane? Sometimes this plane is spherically curved.
Nearer to and farther from the camera the sharpness decreases gradually.
So DOF has to be taken with a grain of salt.😋

if you are using a lens that has a pronounced curvature to its plane of focus, you stop it down to increase DoF and obtain sufficiently sharp focus across the field of view, or you leave it wide open to use the defocus off center to create pleasing imaging effects. Lens opening will also affect the range of distances on center that produce satisfactory sharpness.

Why take the notion of DOF with a grain of salt?

G

 

[jankap]

Sufficiently sharp for the envisaged purpose!
In another forum somebody thought, that there is a frontier at the DOF distance marks: from sharpest to very unsharp.

 

[Godfrey]

That's just naïve. 😉

 

[AndyCapp]

I have the Photographers' Friend app on my iPhone. It does not simulate anything; it just gives me the plain facts.
In the questions about DoF, the Circle of Confusion is a central concept.
The Temptations had a song about it in the seventies.

 

[CMur12]

Is the simulator in question actually more of a DOF calculator?

I really miss the DOF scales we used to have on lenses. Especially in the case of a wide angle lens, I rarely focus on an object, but rather focus on an area.

I realize that the scales are for "acceptable sharpness," and that the photographer needs to interpret the scales just as s/he needs to interpret a light meter reading.

- Murray

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Not sure how relevant to this thread.
I used DOF Master website calculation page to see from where to where it is going to be in focus depending on aperture, focusing distance and sensor size or film format.