DOF

DOF, the acronym for Depth of Field. Decades ago it was one of the key things in photography, taking photos with great DOF to get everything in focus. You needed great lenses with small apertures, often smaller than f16, to get the best DOF.

That's because you couldn't manipulate the photos in the darkroom to get more DOF. Now you can create great DOF in the photo editor, either as a High Dynamic Range image or with standards photo editor tools.

But it's always funny to read comments about images with damn near everything in focus, knowing it was impossible in the field short of a large format camera, which is rare these days (I use one for this purpose) or a 6x6 or 35mm Tilt-Shift lens, and more than likely done in the computer.

So why do photographers fawn over images with great DOF thinking it was done when the photographer was standing there taking the shot? Beats me, because I'll bet it wasn't in the original image, only in the final one.