Depth of Focus - Depth of Focus Vs depth of Field

Depth of Focus Vs depth of Field

While the phrase depth of focus was historically used, and is sometimes still used, to mean depth of field (DOF), in modern times it is more often reserved for the image-side depth.

Depth of field is the range of distances in object space for which object points are imaged with acceptable sharpness with a fixed position of the image plane (the plane of the film or electronic sensor). Depth of focus can have two slightly different meanings. The first is the distance over which the image plane can be displaced while a single object plane remains in acceptably sharp focus; the second is the image-side conjugate of depth of field. With the first meaning, the depth of focus is symmetrical about the image plane; with the second, the depth of focus is greater on the far side of the image plane, though in most cases the distances are approximately equal.

Where depth of field often can be measured in macroscopic units such as meters and feet, depth of focus is typically measured in microscopic units such as fractions of a millimeter or thousandths of an inch.

The same factors that determine depth of field also determine depth of focus, but these factors can have different effects than they have in depth of field. Both depth of field and depth of focus increase with smaller apertures. For distant subjects (beyond macro range), depth of focus is relatively insensitive to focal length and subject distance, for a fixed f-number. In the macro region, depth of focus increases with longer focal length or closer subject distance, while depth of field decreases.

Read more about this topic:  Depth Of Focus