Advertisement
Advertisement
Read Next
Photo Of The Day By Joshua Moore
Today’s Photo Of The Day is...Photo Of The Day By Harry Lichtman
Today’s Photo Of The Day is “Winter...Photo Of The Day By Heather Nicole
Today’s Photo Of The Day is “Cheesy...Photo Of The Day By Laura Schoenbauer
Today’s Photo Of The Day is “Follow...Advertisement
Featured Articles
Read More
Moody Landscapes
Depending on where you live, clouds may dominate your skies for 250-plus days of the year. This is more the...
Read More
B.E.T.T.E.R. P.I.C.S.
10 tips to improve your image-making techniques
To access this content, you must purchase Outdoor Photographer Membership.
Read More
The Best 70-200mm Zoom Lenses
Top models of this versatile “workhorse” lens for nature photographers.
Read More
Drones For Photography
For access to the unique perspectives that come with altitude, these affordable drones for photography are hitting new heights.
To access this content, you must purchase Outdoor Photographer Membership.
Read More
No Low-Pass Filter on Photography Cameras?
In 2012, Nikon introduced the D800 and the D800E, which were identical, but the D800E had the effects of its anti-aliasing (AA) filter removed.
Read More
Going Deep
Take the time to study and learn about your subjects for more meaningful wildlife images.
To access this content, you must purchase Outdoor Photographer Membership.
Lens Diffraction
(© Ian Plant) Without getting deep into the science of optics or physics (frankly, I don’t understand either), diffraction is basically a reduction in lens resolution that occurs when you use small apertures, for example f/16 or f/22. Is this something you should be concerned about?
In a nutshell, the answer is both yes and no, but mostly no. If you can avoid small apertures, you should do so to optimize image quality. On the other hand, loss of sharpness due to diffraction is typically not very significant, and since there are many good reasons why you may wish to use small apertures, diffraction shouldn’t be high on your worry list.
Small apertures may be necessary if you want to make certain types of images. For example, when incorporating the sun into your images, small apertures such as f/16 or f/22 are necessary to get the most attractive sun stars. Small apertures may also be useful for achieving long exposures that result in motion blur, although neutral density filters can be used as well. By far the most common reason for using small apertures is to get sufficient depth-of-field in order to achieve near-to-far sharpness. The photo posted below is a perfect example. I was literally inches away from the foreground branch with a wide angle lens. In order to ensure sharp focus from my foreground to my background, I needed to stop down to f/16. Although I lose a bit of overall image sharpness to diffraction at this aperture, the lack of sharpness that would have resulted from insufficient depth-of-field would have been much worse. I’ll trade diffraction for depth-of-field any day.
The bottom line is that in most instances, diffraction will result in an acceptable loss of image quality, one that can be more or less corrected by a little extra sharpening when preparing the image for printing. You might not be able to create a 40”x60” print from a diffraction limited digital file and expect to see lots of fine detail (then again, I’ve made some big prints from images taken at small apertures that look incredible in terms of sharpness and detail), but for most uses you likely won’t even notice. The bottom line is that although you should avoid small apertures when possible, never let concerns about diffraction get in the way of your artistic vision.
To keep up with my blog entries on my personal photoblog and on this blog you can subscribe to my blog feed, or follow me on Twitter or Facebook.