Beginners Depth of Field tool

[Comedy Rotten]

Here is a basic excel spreadsheet I made that will calculate the hyperfocal distance, along with the nearest and furthest points of focus in the depth of field.

RADoF.zip

There are four variables the user can input: Sensor size (diagonal measurement in millimeters), F/stop number (e.g. 1.4, 1.8, 5.6, 8, 11, etc.), Distance to subject (the focus distance), Focal length (50mm, 18mm, 80mm, etc.).

Let me give you a basic run-down of what all these columns mean. First off, all these calculations are done using millimeters, and then converted to feet in the last three columns. So you'll have to convert the final answers to whatever measurement you use.
The first column is a description of some popular print sizes for photographs.
The next two columns (Actual Height and Actual Width) are the height and width measurement of the print sizes in millimeters.
The Aspect Ratio column is (of course) the ratio of the print sizes. This column is purely for reference.
Diagonal is the diagonal distance from one corner of the print size rectangle to the other.
Resolution Factor is used for calculating the Circle of Confusion.
Circle of Confusion is just what it says. If you want more information on the circle of confusion, Google it.

The "Hyperfocal(ft)" column displays the hyper-focal distance of all the current input options. The hyper-focal distance is the distance that the most things are in focus at the same time.

The next two columns are the far and near parts of the depth of field. They show you how shallow your depth of field is, and close or far away the subject can get before becoming out of focus.

If you have any questions, please ask. And as the title suggests, this is for beginners, but it may also be useful to more advanced photographers.

[LeeR]

Thanks for doing all the thankless work of putting this chart together. DOF is one of the first things new photogs need to learn and hyperfocal distance can be extremely helpful in certain situations. Having a tool like this could be very useful.

[Comedy Rotten]

Originally Posted by LeeR

Thanks for doing all the thankless work of putting this chart together. DOF is one of the first things new photogs need to learn and hyperfocal distance can be extremely helpful in certain situations. Having a tool like this could be very useful.

Thank you, and your welcome. I'm still fairly new to this whole photography thing, and I've just recently been wanting to get into landscape photography. While researching that, I came across hyper-focal distance, and all the other depth of field calculations, and was thoroughly confused. Putting them into a spreadsheet has made understanding them much easier for me.

[thon_33]

What is the unit for the "Focus Distance"?

Thanks...

[mitchcook]

Sensor Size would be?

[Comedy Rotten]

Originally Posted by thon_33

What is the unit for the "Focus Distance"?

Thanks...

The focus distance is the distance to the subject, with the subject in about the center of the depth of field. On manual focus lenses, there are numbers on the lens that correspond to the focus distance (e.g. 3ft, 5ft, 10ft, 20ft, 30ft, etc.).

Originally Posted by mitchcook

Sensor Size would be?

You will have to look up the approximate size of your sensor online. Just google the make and model of your camera, and in the technical information they should have the sensor size. There should be two measurements, the height and width of the sensor. The "Sensor Size" is the diagonal of those two measurements.

Just in case you haven't done that much math (or it's been a long time), lets say that the height of our sensor is 3, and the width is 4. Now you multiply 3 by 3 (3 squared), and add it to 4 multiplied by 4 (4squared). This gives you 25. You then take the square root of that number, which gives you 5, and that is your sensor size.

[mitchcook]

Thanks for the tip!

[aprillove20]

I agree that DOF is one of the first things new photogs need to learn and hyper focal distance can be extremely helpful in certain situations.