Plan how much of a photo stays sharp
Portrait at f/1.8 or landscape at f/11 — where does focus actually hold, and where is the hyperfocal point?
Tools used in this guide
The job
Depth of field is the zone that looks sharp: closer than the near limit blurs, beyond the far limit blurs. Wide apertures and close subjects shrink it to millimeters; stopped-down wide lenses stretch it past infinity.
Focal length, f-stop, distance, sensor
Enter the lens focal length, the aperture, and subject distance, then pick your sensor's circle of confusion (full-frame 0.029 mm, APS-C ~0.019, MFT ~0.015). The result lists near/far limits, total depth, and the hyperfocal distance.
Worked example
50 mm at f/1.8 on full-frame focused at 3 m: hyperfocal ≈ 47.9 m, sharp zone ≈ 2.83–3.20 m — barely 37 cm deep. Stop to f/8 and the same setup holds roughly 2.4 m to 4.1 m.
Where it stops
Thin-lens math assumes a simple lens and a flat subject plane; macro distances and tilt-shift movements break it. 'Acceptably sharp' is a judgment baked into the CoC — print big and you may want a stricter circle.