SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD

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Most lenses that come with a camera are consumer lenses, meaning that they are priced to be competitive and affordable. These lenses can have perfectly fine optics, but they suffer from a lack of shallow depth of field. Your lens has "f" numbers that relate to the changeable size of the circular aperture blades. A wide circle allows a lot of light into the camera, and a small circle reduces the amount of light entering the camera.

A "fast" lens refers to lenses that have small f-numbers, such as f1.4, f1.8, or f2.8. These lenses, although often more expensive than your normal lenses, have the benefit of offering the photo a very shallow depth of field. The above example photo was taken with a 50mm f1.4 lens. Part of its pleasant nature is the fact that the background is out of focus. If your lens has f4.5 as its smallest f-number, the background may remain somewhat in-focus, thus reducing the photos visual impact.

Not everyone can afford 'fast' lenses, as they are professional models and can be more than $1000. However, why not start out with a used 50mm f1.4, or a 85mm f1.8 lens? These prime lenses will increase the value of your photos in two ways: they will be sharper than your consumer zoom lenses, and they will offer a much shallower depth of field (which means more background blur).

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