LX3 dof

Panasonic LX3 Depth of Field

Page under construction........
The LX3 having a small sensor and short focal lengths allows for extreme depth of field. People looking to isolate their subject from the background as in portraits will have some difficulties. First up this page will just have some tables showing what happens at two different focal lengths and then later add some practical content with some images under the extremes of settings.

These tables constructed from the calculator located at http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Depth of field tables and calculations are based on folks with normal vision viewing an 8"x10" (200mm x 250mm) print from a distance of 12" (300mm). The hyperfocal distance is quoted as the focus point at which maximum depth of field is obtained from near to infinity. The nominal focus points of 6 ft and 1.8 m were chosen with no aim to say 6 ft equals 1.8 m, but it is comfortably close.

At 5.1mm (=24mm performance)	Focus at 6 ft or at 1.8 m	Hyperfocal Focus Distance
f/2.0	all in focus from 3.26 ft to 37.8 ft all in focus from 0.98 m to 10.5 m	at 7.13 ft all in focus from 3.56 ft to infinity at 2.173 m all in focus from 1.09 m to infinity
f/4.0	all in focus from 2.24 ft to infinity all in focus from 0.68 m to infinity	at 3.572 ft all in focus from 1.79 ft to infinity at 1.09 m all in focus from 0.54 m to infinity
f/8.0	all in focus from 1.37 ft to infinity all in focus from 0.42m to infinity	at 1.795 ft all in focus from 0.9 ft to infinity at 0.55 m all in focus from 0.27 m to infinity

At 12.8mm (=60mm performance)	Focus at 6 ft or at 1.8 m	Hyperfocal Focus Distance
f/2.8	all in focus from 5.02 ft to 7.45 ft all in focus from 1.51 m to 2.23 m	at 30.7 ft all in focus from 15.4 ft to infinity at 9.37 m all in focus from 4.68 m to infinity
f/4.0	all in focus from 4.71 ft to 8.27 ft all in focus from 1.42 m to 2.47 m	at 21.7 ft all in focus from 10.9 ft to infinity at 6.63 m all in focus from 3.31 m to infinity
f/8.0	all in focus from 3.87 ft to 13.3 ft all in focus from 1.17 m to 3.92 m	at 10.9 ft all in focus from 5.45 ft to infinity at 3.32 m all in focus from 1.66 m to infinity

Note: No 12.8 mm in the online DOF calculator so used 12.6 mm as nearest slightly more generous setting to DOF result.

From the above you can see that at maximum wide angle is is hard not to get everything in acceptable focus, while at maximum tele it is obviously more critical to get the focus correct.

Hyperfocal focus to get scenery all in focus is possibly an outdated notion, so more reading on the subject is worthwhile and very interesting. Proven by me to be true in 35mm film days but have not persevered with tests in digital days to see the differences. http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/DOFR.html

Please realise that the depth of field effect is not a sharp cutoff at the extremes, it's just where someone with normal vision and that 8"x10" print will start to see some softness. Smaller prints will not show that softness and appear to have greater depth of field, larger prints will increasingly show a shallower depth of field.

For a graphical display of depth of field, obtain the circle of confusion figure (0.006mm in this case) from the above calculator and plug it into this calculator to get a result like shown, choose true focal length and a selection of apertures to get this graph. http://www.dof.pcraft.com/dof.cgi

More to follow later....

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