Control depth of field

Use wide apertures to add an abundance of blur

Adjusting the depth of field – or depth of sharpness – is an important aspect of garden photography. Too much, and you risk the background details becoming too discernible; too little, and the picture can end up looking soft. Not that artistically blurred pictures are bad, especially when you’re dealing with delicate, colourful flowers.

Both the distance you are from the subject and the choice of aperture have a significant impact on the depth of field. The closer you are and the wider the aperture, the shallower the depth of field.

For direct control of the aperture, use aperture priority, flexible priority (which is only available on a handful of cameras) or manual. The aperture range that’s available depends on the lens that’s attached to the camera, although the image that you see in the viewfinder or the rear screen is always displayed at the maximum or widest aperture, even if you’ve set a smaller one to bring more of the subject into sharp focus.

You can temporarily view the image at other aperture settings by holding down the depth of field preview button. This is positioned at the front of the camera near the lens mount on the majority of EOS bodies, although you can assign the function to another button (and in the case of some beginner-friendly EOS cameras, you can only activate the function once you’ve assigned it to the SET button).

The EOS R3 saw the debut of full-time depth-of-field simulation in an EOS camera. This can be activated alongside the exposure simulation for electronic viewfinders and Live View displays. It means you don’t have to keep pressing the depth of field preview button to check the changes as you adjust the aperture, making the whole process much faster, and it’s something we’re likely to see in future cameras.