Would you use...

...a DOF bracket feature, if it was offered on your camera?


Bracketed exposures in Av mode all have the same aperture, and varied shutter speeds. Bracketed exposures in Tv mode all have the same shutter speed, and varied apertures.


What if the camera could do a series of exposures that had varied shutter speeds and inversely varied apertures? All of the shots would be equally exposed (unlike existing brackets), but with varied depth-of-field. Would you use it? If so, how do we ask Canon to do this?

I don't think I'd use such a feature, if it existed. The type of situation where I might want to vary the aperture for effect tends to be a slow moving one (i.e. landscape). It is simple enough to just change the aperture in Av mode, or shutter too in manual. Not against it appearing in the menus, though :)

I doubt that I'd use it often (if at all), but it would be a very nice feature to have available.

When you get Canon on the phone, see if you can get variable-ISO included as well. I want to set shutter speed and aperature and have the camer pick the appropriate ISO to get a good exposure.


When you talked about varying aperature, It reminded me of my Canon AE-1 and the days ofshutter priority / manual focus. I used to geta little excited shooting sports and grab the aperature ring instead of the focus ring. I would shoot these really interesting sequences where the depth of field changed with each shot as did the exposure.

Now with PS CS4's ability to do focus merging, I think it would be great to have a camera that could bracket focus distance. You could select your near focus point, your aperture and then the camera would calculate your depth of field and when you press the shutter it would take a series of photos with increasing focus dinstances up to a specified distance and then you could use the PS tools to merge them. This would be great for product photography and other types of close-up photography of static subjects.

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Originally Posted by Greg J.

You can already do this. In P-mode, using the scroll wheel adjusts shutter speed and aperture as you describe, with the same exposure, thereby varying depth of field.
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Wait. peety3, did you really mean DOF bracket, or focus bracket? It seems focus bracket is what you would want to use for what Stephen suggests.


I would definitely use focus bracket if it was available. I've often wondered why it isn't.


DOF bracket is easy enough to do manually, as Greg suggests (though I would use aperture priority).

Yeah, I mean focus bracketing, not depth of field bracketing. I'm making up numbers here, but say you are taking a picture of some fruit in a light box....you have a really close subject distance and your aperture isn't enough to give you the depth of field you want...say your subject is 40cm away and is 30cm deep and you can only get a depth of field with f/8 of 10cm (made up numbers), then you could have your camera increment your focus distance from 40cm to 70cm in 10cm increments. Then CS4 can merge those shots into a continuous depth of field which would be impossible to achieve in a single shot at that distance, aperture, etc.

Something like this: http://www.refocusimaging.com/about/

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Originally Posted by Greg J.

You can already do this. In P-mode, using the scroll wheel adjusts shutter speed and aperture as you describe, with the same exposure, thereby varying depth of field.
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Yep, knew that. Can do a DoF bracket manually in Av and Tv too - knew that. Just looking for a way to grab an auto DoF bracket in a convenient manner. With my 1D Mark III, I have the option of bracketing with 2, 3, 5 or 7 shots, and with 10fps and high-speed drive I can rip through the shots rather quickly. I have instances where my shot won't be available long, I know I want some DoF options, and I want a way to capture that. Don't need it, but want it.


I can see the focus bracketing being useful too, though it'd be tough to accomplish in a usable manner.