Constant Aperture and DOF

frofan

I recently purchased a Nikkor 18-200 VR lens, but I'm now having second thoughts about my purchase, and may return it for a constant aperture lens. I'm mostly doing sporting events and some nature / landscape work. Is it possible to get a full DOF with a constant aperture lens, like the 17-55 f/2.8? The other lens I was looking at was the 80-200 F/2.8 for my sporting events. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated! All purchases will be made through BHPhoto. Thanks!

Richard

frofan wrote:

I recently purchased a Nikkor 18-200 VR lens, but I'm now having second thoughts about my purchase, and may return it for a constant aperture lens. I'm mostly doing sporting events and some nature / landscape work. Is it possible to get a full DOF with a constant aperture lens, like the 17-55 f/2.8? The other lens I was looking at was the 80-200 F/2.8 for my sporting events. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated! All purchases will be made through BHPhoto. Thanks!

Constant aperture doesn't prevent you from setting a smaller aperture to obtain greater DOF. It just means that wide open, the lens has the same maximum aperture regardless of the focal length.

Lovesong

And yet another thing to remember is that with different focal lengths, your DOF changes- meaning that at 20mm, f/2.8 would have larger DOF than at 200mm.

muserato

You should take a look at this calculator:

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

It will give you an idea of what DOF does based on focal lenght for your particuar camera.