Depth of Field Calculator
Tell it your sensor, lens and aperture, and where you are focusing — it works out exactly how much of the scene stays acceptably sharp, from the near limit to the far limit, plus the hyperfocal distance. Instant, in your browser, no sign-up.
In focus from 2.74 m to 3.32 m.
| Near sharp limit | 2.74 m |
| Far sharp limit | 3.32 m |
| Total depth of field | 0.58 m |
| Hyperfocal distance | 30.84 m |
Where the sharpness falls — camera at 0, distances running to the right:
How to read this
You focus at one exact distance — say 3 metres. The near and far limits are the closest and furthest points either side of it that still look acceptably sharp. They are not walls: sharpness fades gradually beyond them, so treat the limits as the edge of “sharp enough”, not the edge of a cliff. As a rough rule, about a third of the depth of field sits in front of your focus point and two thirds behind it, though that split shifts as you focus closer.
The hyperfocal distance is the landscape photographer's shortcut. Focus exactly there and everything from half that distance to infinity is acceptably sharp — the maximum depth of field that lens and aperture can give you. Focus further away than the hyperfocal distance and the far limit becomes infinity too, but you waste some of that sharpness behind the horizon and pull the near limit closer to you than it needed to be.
What depth of field actually is
Strictly speaking, only one plane in your photo is perfectly focused — the exact distance you focused at. Everything in front of it and behind it is technically a little blurred. Depth of field is the zone where that blur is so small your eye still reads it as sharp. Widen the aperture and the zone shrinks to a sliver: lovely for a portrait, where the eyes are crisp and the background melts away. Stop down and the zone stretches until, at the right focus distance, it reaches infinity. That control — choosing what the viewer is allowed to see clearly — is one of the main creative levers in photography, and it runs through everything from portraiture to the work in our fine-art photography walkthrough.
Hyperfocal distance: the landscape trick
For a landscape you usually want the foreground flower and the distant ridge sharp in the same frame. The instinct is to focus on the horizon — but that wastes depth of field behind the camera's subject and leaves the foreground soft. Instead, focus at the hyperfocal distance the calculator gives you for your lens and aperture. Everything from half that distance to infinity then falls inside the sharp zone. At 24 mm and f/11 on full frame, that point is only a couple of metres away, which is why wide lenses feel so forgiving outdoors. Pick an aperture, read the number, pace it out or estimate it, focus there once — and stop worrying.
Why sensor size changes the numbers
Put the same 50 mm lens at f/2.8, focused at 3 metres, on three cameras and you get three different answers. A smaller sensor sees a cropped slice of the lens's image, and that crop is then enlarged more to reach the same print or screen size — so blur that was invisible on full frame becomes visible sooner. The calculator accounts for this with a smaller circle of confusion for APS-C and Micro Four Thirds, which is why their depth of field reads deeper for the same settings. Nothing about the lens changed; what changed is how hard you are magnifying its image. It is also why “equivalent aperture” arguments exist: an f/2.8 shot on Micro Four Thirds frames and blurs roughly like f/5.6 on full frame.
Aperture trade-offs: sharpness, light and shutter speed
Stopping down is not free. Each stop smaller halves the light reaching the sensor, so your shutter speed halves or your ISO doubles — and a tripod-worthy landscape setting like f/11 can mean a blur-inducing shutter speed for a handheld portrait. There is also a ceiling: past roughly f/11 on full frame (earlier on smaller sensors), diffraction starts softening the whole frame even as the depth of field grows. Most lenses are at their sharpest a stop or two down from wide open, which is why the habits in how to take sharp photos every time matter more than chasing the smallest aperture. And when the light itself is scarce, no aperture maths rescues a bad position — using natural light well will do more for the photo than any setting on this page.
Once the shot is sharp
Depth of field decided and focus nailed, the usual next questions are practical: how big can I print this? and how do I share it without email rejecting the attachment — our image compressor shrinks the file in your browser, no upload involved.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my far limit infinity — is that a bug?
No — it is the outcome you want for landscapes. Once your focus distance reaches the hyperfocal distance, the far edge of the sharp zone passes the horizon and runs to infinity. Everything from the near limit onwards is acceptably sharp, which is exactly the position landscape photographers deliberately put themselves in.
Does focus distance or focal length matter more?
Focus distance, by a distance. Depth of field shrinks roughly with the square of the focus distance — focus twice as close and you get about a quarter of the depth — so moving a step nearer your subject changes the numbers far more than swapping lenses does. Here is the honest footnote: if you change focal length and move to keep the same framing, the depth of field barely changes at all. Focal length mostly matters because it changes where you stand.
Is the calculator exact?
The geometry is exact; the definition of “sharp” is a convention. The limits are calculated from a circle of confusion — the largest blur spot that still reads as a point — using the standard values for each sensor size (0.029 mm for full frame, 0.019 mm for APS-C, 0.015 mm for Micro Four Thirds). View the photo huge, or inspect it at 100%, and you will find softness a little inside the stated limits. Treat the numbers as a reliable planning guide, not a guarantee measured in millimetres.