Shallow focus is a photographic and

cinematographic Cinematography () is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography. Cinematographers use a lens (optics), lens to focus reflected light from objects into a real image that is transferred to some image sen ...

technique incorporating a small

depth of field The depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and the farthest objects that are in acceptably sharp focus (optics), focus in an image captured with a camera. See also the closely related depth of focus. Factors affecting depth ...

. In shallow focus, one plane of the scene is in

focus Focus (: foci or focuses) may refer to: Arts * Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in East Australia Film *Focus (2001 film), ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based on the Arthur Miller novel *Focus (2015 ...

while the rest is out of focus. Shallow focus is typically used to emphasize one part of the image over another. Photographers sometimes refer to the aesthetic quality of the unfocused area(s) as

bokeh In photography, bokeh ( or ; ) is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image, whether foreground or background or both. It is created by using a wide aperture lens. Some photographers incorrectly restr ...

. The opposite of shallow focus is

deep focus Deep focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique using a large depth of field. Depth of field is the front-to-back range of focus (optics), focus in an image, or how much of it appears sharp and clear. In deep focus, the foreground, midd ...

, in which the entire image is in focus.

Overview

Shallow focus has become more popular in the 2000s and 2010s. It is also a means by which low budget filmmakers use to hide places that would require expensive props. It is often proclaimed by some to being a way to avoid the "video look." Extremely shallow focus – sometimes called ''bokeh porn'' – made its debut in cinematography in 2008 with the release of the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and the start of

DSLR A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a solid-state image sensor and digitally records the images from the sensor. The reflex des ...

cinematography. Autumn Illumination in Tokugawa Garden

Details

The effect can be obtained by a larger

aperture In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image o ...

, a close viewpoint, a larger

image sensor An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to form an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they refraction, pass through or reflection (physics), reflect off objects) into s ...

or a longer

focal length The focal length of an Optics, optical system is a measure of how strongly the system converges or diverges light; it is the Multiplicative inverse, inverse of the system's optical power. A positive focal length indicates that a system Converge ...

lens from a smaller distance. A tilt lens can be used, in the opposite way to that used to increase depth of focus. There are even adapters that allow lenses from 35 mm cine cameras to be used on smaller film and digital formats.

Examples

In the film '' The Rules of the Game'' (1939), a couple flirts in the foreground while the woman's husband enters in the background. Director Jean Renoir chose to keep the husband out of focus so that his presence is hinted, but not emphasized.

References

Photographic techniques Cinematography {{filming-stub