Is Depth of Field Scale a Big Factor?

For me, yes.

But I don't know for fellow Nikonians.

I love landscape photography and prefert to (in most cases)keep in

focus the main subject and the background or secondary subject in the

background. I don't know how it can be done if the Lens doesn't have

DOF Scale.

I recently bought Nikon 28-70/2.8 AF S lens and was very much happy

assuming it has DOF Scale (in picture the lens looked like that) but

got a bit disappointed when I got the lens seeing no DOF scale.

1.Is there any easy way to fulfil my purpose as above with this lens?

 

I know some of you guys are gonna tell me to use DOF preview button

in my Nikon F5 but

 

2.does this really solve the problem?

 

I tried to use it but for me there is no difference which area is in

focus and which not seeing the darkened part.

 

Kindly suggest me in this regard.

 

Thanks.

I seldom use the DOF scale on my Nikon, on some other cameras I do, but not on my SLRs. I think you need to either get used to DOF preview or use DOF tables or a DOF calculator.

 

Both are better anyway than the DOF scale on the lens, as that is often either too small to render useful information or too optimistic to be of any worth, though it all depends on how critical the focus must be. On a zoom in particular it's hard to make a useful DOF scale.

 

I haven't got any links right here for tables and calculators, but if you can't find them, I'm sure someone else can point you in the right direction.

DoF preview is a very useful feature, but it doesn't replace

a proper DoF scale on the lens.

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DoF preview is very good for checking your background on

closeups, to make sure that something which

look completely blurred wide open doesn't become sharp enough

to become a distraction at the taking aperture. A slightly

blurred but recognizable tree branch sticking out of your

subject's head can be recognized and avoided using DoF preview.

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The problem with DoF preview is that it's very hard to see

whether something's critically sharp when looking at a little

image of it in the viewfinder, especially if that image is dim.

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DoF calculators and tables can work, but carrying such

things and refers to them in the field seems like quite

a bother, when there are plenty of lenses available with

good DoF scales.

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But if you want a really good DoF scale, big enough to

be easily readable, and containing enough different apertures to

be useful (at least every other stop), then you're better off

going to a manual focus lens. The scales on AF lenses tend to

be tiny, because of their short focus throw. And most AF zooms

omit DoF scales entirely.

A few other points. The DOF scales on prime lenses are generally way too optimistic. DOF depends on something called Circle of Confusion, which is a number that is set by a judgement call. The traditional CoC may have made sense 50 or 75 years ago when film grain was much larger than today; now one typically has to use a one or two stop more conservative setting.

 

The following is my own solution to maximizing sharpness, YMMV:

 

Using 35mm equipment, I did some experiments to see just what my DOF is at various focal lengths and f/stops, when the film is printed. The upshot is that when I want to maximize my DOF, I don't use hyperfocal or a DOF calculator. Instead, I shoot at f/16 (wind allowing) and focus on whatever I consider to be the plane of the most important part of the composition.

 

Consider a scene that has a log fence in the foreground, a barn mid ground, and trees on the horizon. Normally it will be critical to get the barn and fence in focus; a DOF blur to the distant trees simply enhances the sense of scale. So I'd focus between the fence and the barn, and trust f/16 to give me both of them. If my focal length is so long or my aperture so wide (to give me a shutter speed fast enough to stop wind motion) that I can't have both the barn and the fence, I'd probably choose the fence.

 

I use f/16 (again, I'm talking 35mm) because f/22 and smaller apertures start to throw away sharpness due to diffraction loses. Shooting hyperfocal doesn't work for me. If anything is going to be out of focus, I rarely want it to be the foreground, and that's just what hyperfocal results in.

 

But then, I've always been the one to march to the sound of a different drum, so don't pay any attention to me!

I am absolutely uncomfortable with DOF preview on my F3 and I had bizarre results relying on it alone. On the other hand, relying on f16 for sure DOF, also results in loss of sharpness(at least with my Nikkor 50mm 2.0) and is handy only with brightly lit scenes. Not surprisingly, the sharpest f stop on my lens is 5.6 and I learned this hard way :0). Now, I usually focus 1/3 into the scene I want to keep in focus for a quick exposure. If I have time, I check DOF scale on my lens and then adjust according to the needs of my composition.