I can't cover all the aspects of this topic in depth since there is so much variety in all the camera's people use and so on but I will discuss as much as is practicle.
This is the time of year for flower pictures. You see images of roses with dew drops on them, and all kinds of other blooms in gardens and yards everywhere. But how do you get your own images to look like the ones in the magazines?
To do this you need to understand (among other things) depth of field. Not all cameras will let you have control over this, but you need to know how it works anyway. Depth of field is controlled by the aperture of your lens and the distance to your subject. Aperture is the size of the opening that lets light into your camera. It is a mathematical ratio of the area of the opening. You don't need to worry about that, I only mentioned it so you would know. Aperture is expressed in terms called "stops" like "f/8," or "f/22" and so on. Now here's the important part and don't try to figure out why this works, just take my word for it OK! With all cameras and lenses, the bigger the opening in the lens, the shallower the depth of field, and the reverse is true as well. So the smaller the opening, the longer or deeper the depth of field. Here's a little twist about this, the smaller f-stop numbers refer to larger openings. The larger the f-stop number the smaller the opening. As I said don't try to figure it out, just take my word for it.
Now I said there is a lot to know about this so I'm going to add one more tid bit here for you to consider too. That is that the depth of field is also affected by the distance to the subject. If you set your cameras exposure and lock it in place then focus on something close you will have a shallower or shorter depth of field than if you focus on something farther away.
Okay, so how does all of this relate to shooting a flower? Well, in most instances you want as much of the flower in focus as possible. To do that you need an adequate depth of field. For those with SLR cameras you can set your aperture to it's highest setting such as f/28 or whatever and fire away. If you don't have control over aperture though you need to control the distance you are from the subject. Remember, the closer you are the shallower the depth of field. I have a little rule of thumb for new SLR owners that seems to help them understand how to use the F stops but it doesn't really explain what it is. Generally speaking, the higher the number, IE f/32 or f/64 the deeper the depth of field. Go to a smaller number such as f/2 and you have a shorter depth of field.
There are two other points I need to mention here. The first is composition and the second is where do you focus? With composition, you should always try to fill your frame. Closer and larger us usually always better when shooting flowers. When focusing, if you have control over this, you should always begin by focusing on the part of the flower that is closest to the camera. Experiment with other parts of the flower as well but start there first.
DV
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