Have you ever admired a beautiful macro photo of dewdrops on a flower that reflected the world around it, and thought that it must be a hard photo to take? It’s not; pictures like these simply need a little preparation and a few basic accessories.

DSLRs boast a low depth of field that lets you take sharp portraits with blurred backgrounds. This elegant effect helps you to eliminate unwanted, distracting background details in a picture. You can also simulate this effect on a computer.

Having at least some part be sharp in every photo is a goal for most photographers. But it doesn’t always work out. After all, there’s a number of things that can prevent sharp photos.

Christmas is knocking at the door, and lots of photographers would love to send an original Christmas greeting—their own photos. Today we’ll look close up at one photo that would make a great greeting, to help you delight with a similar one of your own.

Perfect sharpness in a photo isn’t always something you want. Blurring can come in handy both when fixing mistakes in your photos and as a tool for creative expression.

Even with an extremely fast lens, the smallest possible aperture isn’t always the best choice. There are so many special cases out there in the real world—each one with its own optimum depth of field.

The aperture you use fundamentally influences your depth of field, and depth of field fundamentally influences your final picture. In this article we’ll take a practical look at a variety of apertures and how they affect background sharpness.

They’re heavy and they have no zoom, but because of their image quality, some professionals use only these lenses. Why are ultra-fast lenses so highly valued?

Used wisely, low depth of field makes your pictures more interesting, more intelligible, and easier to “read”. So—how do you get that pleasantly unsharp background in a photo? The following