I wasn’t happy with the text-only depth-of-field calculator I had made. Sure I could calculate the near limit and far limit, but those numbers still remained a bit abstract. What is a ‘shallow’ or ‘large’ depth-of-field? So first I added the % (“1.71 m Total (34.2% of the subject distance)“), which gave you some feeling. But I knew I wanted a graphical representation, a visualisation of it.
So I started with the triangle: the focal distance & crop factor define the vertical angle of view, and together with the aperture, they define the near/far limit. And then I wanted to add a representation of a person, to get a real feel of the situation. I needed to dive into HTML5 and its <canvas> element to find the right tools (so it doesn’t work in IE, but honestly: just get Chrome), but I finally managed: the DOF calculator now has a visualisation that makes things much clearer. Just try it!
