In a photograph, the area of critical focus is the portion of the picture that is optically in focus. This does not relate to depth of field which describes apparent sharpness. Reducing the size of the aperture will increase the depth of field but the plane of critical focus will not change. Depth of field extends away from the plane of critical sharpness.
The image is only critically in focus within a plane. The formula that describes the relationship between plane of sharpness, lens and film is
- ,
where is the film to lens distance, is the distance from the lens to the plane of critical focus, and is the focal length of the lens.
'Critical Focus' is also the title of a regular column by Brian J. Ford in the American magazine The Microscope.
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or focus:
“I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts—especially texts by black women. A working-class Jewish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American scholar and educator. Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B2 (July 27, 1994)
“Carlyle is not a seer, but a brave looker-on and reviewer; not the most free and catholic observer of men and events, for they are likely to find him preoccupied, but unexpectedly free and catholic when they fall within the focus of his lens.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)