🔎 Depth of Field Calculator
Enter your focal length, aperture, focus distance, and sensor format to see exactly how much of the scene will be sharp — the near and far limits, the total depth of field, and the hyperfocal distance.
🔎 Calculate Your Depth of Field
What is a Depth of Field Calculator?
It turns the optics of your lens into plain numbers. Give it the focal length, the f-stop, how far away your subject is, and which sensor you shoot, and it reports the zone of sharpness in front of and behind your focus point — so you can tell before you press the shutter whether a background will melt away or the whole scene will hold focus.
Use it to nail eyes-sharp portraits at f/1.8, to keep a sweeping landscape crisp from foreground rocks to distant peaks, or to find the hyperfocal distance for a scene and lock everything in from half that distance to infinity.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
What is depth of field?
Depth of field is the range of distances in a scene that appears acceptably sharp. Everything from the near limit to the far limit looks in focus; subjects closer or further than that range fall off into blur. A shallow depth of field isolates a subject against a soft background, while a deep depth of field keeps foreground and distance both sharp.
What controls how shallow the depth of field is?
Three things: aperture, focal length, and focus distance. A wider aperture (smaller f-number like f/1.8), a longer focal length, and focusing closer all shrink the depth of field. Stopping down (f/11, f/16), using a wider lens, or focusing further away all deepen it. Sensor size matters too — smaller sensors give more apparent depth of field at the same framing.
What is the hyperfocal distance?
The hyperfocal distance is the closest focus point at which the far limit of sharpness stretches to infinity. Focus there and everything from roughly half that distance out to infinity is acceptably sharp — the trick landscape photographers use to maximise front-to-back sharpness in a single frame.
Why does the circle of confusion depend on sensor size?
The circle of confusion is the largest blur spot that still reads as a point of focus in the final image. Because a smaller sensor is enlarged more to reach a given print or screen size, it tolerates a smaller blur circle — so this tool uses 0.029 mm for full-frame, 0.019 mm for APS-C, and 0.015 mm for Micro Four Thirds.