The document provides instructions for an assignment to take photographs that illustrate the effect of aperture on depth of field. Students are asked to take pictures of objects at varying distances while changing the aperture from the smallest to largest f-number. This will produce images with shallow to large depths of field that can then be compared. The assignment also tasks students with researching photographers like Ansel Adams, Mona Kuhn, Richard Renaldi and Uta Barth and how they creatively used depth of field in their work.

1. City College Norwich AS Photography
Aperture control
Your task:
Take a range of images that illustrate the effectiveness of aperture control and how this affects
depth of field.
Set your camera to the AV or A option.
Place camera on a tripod, making sure you have objects placed at varing distances from the
lens.
Focus the camera on an object that is ‘mid focus’ in terms of distance from the lens. Keep
the camera focussed on this object (this is easiest if you switch the lens to manual focus
now)
Take your first image using the narrowest depth of field/largest aperture (smallest ‘f’
number). This will usually be something like f4 or f5.6 (some lenses will go down to f1.4 or
lower!)
Now take another image a few stops higher.
Keep doing this until you reach the highest ‘f’ number. This is usually f22 but may go up to
f40 or even more! Note what happens to the shutter speed as you change the aperture
settings.
Compare the image with the smallest depth of field against the image with the largest depth
of field and 2 in between.
Once you have got the hang of controlling aperture take a variety of images that show how
creative you can be using this technique.
Research task:
Look at the following photographers and describe how they have used depth of field to their
advantage:
Ansel Adams (f64 Group)
Mona Kuhn
Richard Renaldi
Uta Barth