Depth of field (DOF) in a photographThis work by Carmen Rio is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license

• DOF: “distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field)

Large DOF: practically the entire image has a sharp definition.

Small or shallow DOF: the subject is emphasized at the expense of the rest of the photograph, which appears unfocused. A typical example is a macro shot, i.e. a close-up of a subject at greater than life size.

Photo published on Flickr by Jennifrog under a CC BY 2.0 license

Photo published on Flickr by Fogview under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license