Narrow DOF

[Leicalifer]

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Hello

 

New to the Leica S. Just picked up a pre-owned 007 on a trade last week and started shooting with a variety of fp lenses I was already using on a SL. What a nice camera!

 

One thing I noticed was this camera seems to exhibit a dof more narrow than what I normally experience with 35 mm digital and film cameras. I read an old article by Thorsten Overgard about the S2 and he mentioned the same.

 

So, why is this so? Not complaining I’d just like to understand why. Larger sensor, or...?

 

Constructive comments appreciated. Thank you.

Edited April 14, 2018 by Leicalifer

[xiaubauu2009]

Just larger sensor. It makes it appear to have a narrow DoF. It's the same DoF just because the Bokeh OFF area become bigger, so it appear to have a shallower DoF.

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[djmay]

Hello

 

New to the Leica S. Just picked up a pre-owned 007 on a trade last week and started shooting with a variety of fp lenses I was already using on a SL. What a nice camera!

 

One thing I noticed was this camera seems to exhibit a dof more narrow than what I normally experience with 35 mm digital and film cameras. I read an old article by Thorsten Overgard about the S2 and he mentioned the same.

 

So, why is this so? Not complaining I’d just like to understand why. Larger sensor, or...?

 

Constructive comments appreciated. Thank you.

DOF is a property that is determined by focal length. A 70mm lens has the same DOF whether it is attached to a S, M, CL or mobile phone camera. DOF becomes increasingly shallower as you move closer to the object of focus. You can find a diagram on the web, which shows the following:

1. Visualize a photo, which is 2:3 aspect ratio

2. Superimpose multiple 2:3 rectangles on the image.

3. Mobile phone image covers the entire area

4. CL covers a smaller area

5. M covers less than CL

6. S cover less than M

7. DOF has not changed, but the coverage has.

8. If you move closer with the M camera in order to have the same framing as the S, the DOF reduces because of less distance to the object of focus.

 

Practically speaking, DOF does decrease when using medium format.

 

Jesse

[jaapv]

Hello

 

New to the Leica S. Just picked up a pre-owned 007 on a trade last week and started shooting with a variety of fp lenses I was already using on a SL. What a nice camera!

 

One thing I noticed was this camera seems to exhibit a dof more narrow than what I normally experience with 35 mm digital and film cameras. I read an old article by Thorsten Overgard about the S2 and he mentioned the same.

 

So, why is this so? Not complaining I’d just like to understand why. Larger sensor, or...?

 

Constructive comments appreciated. Thank you.

Yes. Larger sensor. No, sometimes not really because of subject distance, DOF is a minefield strewn with misconceptions. Focal length has little to do with it, subject distance and perspective is the key.

 

https://luminous-landscape.com/dof2/

 

Petapixel has a good article:

 

https://petapixel.com/2016/05/18/depth-field-explained/

 

More in-depth we have Norman Koren:

 

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF6.html

 

 

Focal length is the tool one uses to control field of view, distance, subject size and perspective, so it is used in some simplified DOF formulas as a mathematical short cut, hence the perception that it is of relevance.

[John McMaster]

Also the S lenses are very sharp, so OOF falloff happens far quicker than with most lenses.

 

john

[jaapv]

Not quicker, more pronounced.

[BernardC]

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Quicker and more pronounced. That's a characteristic of highly-corrected lenses. I first read about it when a Zeiss spokesman explained on Photo.net that the depth of field of the Hasselblad 5.6/250 Superachromat was shallower than that of the 5.6/250 Sonnar, and even the 4.0/250 Tele-Tessar.

 

It makes sense if you think it through. A standard lens focuses green on one plane, red slightly behind that, and blue slightly ahead. That means that you are more likely to have one colour that is sharp, even if the others are not. A highly-corrected lens will achieve higher maximum sharpness/contrast, but the falloff will be greater on either side.

[Photon42]

DOF is a property that is determined by focal length. A 70mm lens has the same DOF whether it is attached to a S, M, CL or mobile phone camera. DOF becomes increasingly shallower as you move closer to the object of focus. You can find a diagram on the web, which shows the following:

1. Visualize a photo, which is 2:3 aspect ratio

2. Superimpose multiple 2:3 rectangles on the image.

3. Mobile phone image covers the entire area

4. CL covers a smaller area

5. M covers less than CL

6. S cover less than M

7. DOF has not changed, but the coverage has.

8. If you move closer with the M camera in order to have the same framing as the S, the DOF reduces because of less distance to the object of focus.

 

Practically speaking, DOF does decrease when using medium format.

 

Jesse

 

 

https://dofsimulator.net/en/

[albertknappmd]

This is a physical fact of life: The bigger the sensor, the less the DOF.

 

It is actually an advantage for many situations as it isolates the key part of your photo very nicely with sharp fall off... classic for Leica lenses...

 

Albert     

[Jeff S]

This may help...

 

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm

 

Jeff

[Guest]

This is a physical fact of life: The bigger the sensor, the less the DOF.

 

It is actually an advantage for many situations as it isolates the key part of your photo very nicely with sharp fall off... classic for Leica lenses...

 

Albert     

 

100 MP sensor for an example......please remove if it doesn't meet the forum rules

 

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[davidmknoble]

The simplest way to think about DOF for the S series goes back to focal length. Often, people compare images taken with the 70 f/2.5 to the 50 f/2.0 (for 35mm) because they are similar in framing the photograph. But, a 70 mm lens using f/2.5 is a very thin DOF. Think about the M lens - 70mm APO f/2.0. The f/2.0 is razor thin. The same is true of the S 70mm lens at 2.5. The S just uses longer focal lengths, so what feels like a higher f/stop still has a narrow DOF. It is the exact opposite from the APS-C sized sensors where a 35mm lens is similar to a 50mm if field of view - and a 35mm lens at f/2 has a larger DOF than a 50mm lens at f/2.

[Michael Geschlecht]

Hello Everybody,

 

Another factor which might be involved here is that floating element lens have less depth of field than lenses where the entire optical unit moves forward or backward together equally as a group.

 

Floating element lens can have a higher degree of sharpness at the image plane but that sharpness falls off more quickly the further from the image plane that the image is captured.

 

This has been reported & commented on in the photographic press many times since the beginning of the regular use of floating element lenses in the 1980's.

 

Does anyone here know if any of the lenses that are producing the images that we are writing about here are lenses that have floating elements?

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

[pico]

Another factor which might be involved here is that floating element lens have less depth of field than lenses where the entire optical unit moves forward or backward together equally as a group.

 

Fascinating, if true. I would dearly appreciate an authoritative citation.

[Michael Geschlecht]

Fascinating, if true. I would dearly appreciate an authoritative citation.

 

Hello Pico,

 

If I were 1/10 as competent as you are with computers I would go back to the 1980's & look this up in a magazine that used to exist which was called "Modern Photograpy". They had a number of things about this. I would begin to look in the mid 1980's.

 

What you can also do is look at any manufacturer's own depth of field tables engraved on their own lenses of different designs: Floating & not floating, of the same focal length. An examples is: The difference in depth of field engraved on the scales of the Leitz Telyt 280mm, F4.8 lens & the depth of field scales engraved on the 280mm, F2.8 Apo lens, first version.

 

You can NOT use the difference in the depth of field in lenses like the "M" versions of the Schneider manufactured 21mm, F4 & F3.4 lenses in chrome as compared to the 21mm F3.4 Black Finished lenses still made by Schneider. Since the change to the Black Finish reflected, among other things, the changeover in the depth of field scales from the Schneider System to the Leitz System.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

Edited May 17, 2018 by Michael Geschlecht

[jip]

Simply said:

 

You go closer to get the same field of view as you would with a fullframe camera. 

 

Going closer makes the depth of field smaller.

[01af]

Depth-of-field is a property that is determined by focal length.

Depth-of-field is a property that is determined by many factors, and focal length is just one of them.

 

 

A 70 mm lens has the same depth-of-field whether it is attached to a S, M, CL or mobile-phone camera.

That's a common misconception. Depth-of-field is not just a property of the lens.

 

 

Floating element lens can have a higher degree of sharpness at the image plane but that sharpness falls off more quickly the further from the image plane that the image is captured.

Higher-performance lenses tend to have less depth-of-field due to higher sharpness at the plane of focus and hence, steeper fall-off into the out-of-focus areas, that much is true—but that's in no way specific to floating elements. Floating elements improve lens performance (at short distances) but so do other things as well, including (but not limited to) modern glass types such as HR or LD glass, apochromatic corrections, or aspheric lens elements.

[albireo_double]

I have suspected what Michael says for a long time. As an example, the Summicron 50 (pre-Apo) always seemed to produce very gradual sharpness fall-off in my images. The more modern M lenses have a much more abrupt transition.

[mgrayson3]

This topic again! I'll throw in my favorite analysis. DoF is almost entirely (in the sense of how big OOF points are as a function of distance from the in-focus plane) determined by the apparent size of the aperture as viewed from the target. Bigger sensor => longer focal length for same FoV => bigger physical aperture at same f-ratio => shallower DoF.

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[01af]

I'll throw in my favorite analysis.

Your analysis is wrong.