Depth of Field Calculator

Depth of field (DoF) is the zone in front of and behind your focus point that appears acceptably sharp in a photograph. It is bounded by a near limit and a far limit: everything between them looks in focus, while objects outside the zone blur progressively. Depth of field is controlled by four things: aperture (f-number), focal length, focus distance, and the circle of confusion of your sensor or film format. Use the calculator above to see the exact near limit, far limit, and total depth of field for your lens and settings.

The standard field formula uses three steps. First compute the hyperfocal distance H = f² ÷ (N × c), where f is focal length, N is the f-number, and c is the circle of confusion. Then near limit = H × s ÷ (H + s) and far limit = H × s ÷ (H − s), where s is the focus distance. Total depth of field = far limit − near limit. Worked example: a 50 mm lens at f/2.8 focused at 3 m on full frame (CoC 0.03 mm) gives H = 50² ÷ (2.8 × 0.03) = 29.76 m, near limit 2.73 m, far limit 3.34 m, and total depth of field 0.61 m. This calculator applies those exact formulas to any lens, aperture, distance, and sensor.

The hyperfocal distance is the closest focus distance at which the far limit of depth of field extends to infinity — the classic landscape technique for maximum front-to-back sharpness. The formula is H = f² ÷ (N × c): focal length squared divided by f-number times circle of confusion. For example, a 35 mm lens at f/8 on full frame (CoC 0.03 mm) has a hyperfocal distance of 35² ÷ (8 × 0.03) ≈ 5.10 m; focus there and everything from 2.55 m to infinity is sharp. The Hyperfocal tab above computes it for your gear, and the zone-focusing table shows near and far limits at any focus distance.

The circle of confusion (CoC) is the largest blur spot on the sensor that still looks like a sharp point in the final image — the threshold the whole depth-of-field calculation rests on. Standard published values: full frame 0.030 mm, APS-C (Nikon/Sony/Fujifilm) 0.020 mm, APS-C (Canon) 0.019 mm, Micro Four Thirds 0.015 mm, 1-inch 0.011 mm, medium format 645 about 0.050 mm, and large format 4×5 in about 0.100 mm. They follow the Zeiss convention of sensor diagonal ÷ 1500. Smaller sensors use smaller CoC values, which is why the same lens at the same aperture gives deeper depth of field on a crop sensor. The sensor presets above set these automatically, or enter your own.

Use a wide-angle lens, stop down to around f/8–f/11, and focus at the hyperfocal distance. Avoid stopping down past about f/16 on full frame (earlier on high-resolution or crop sensors), because diffraction softens the whole image and cancels the gain in depth of field — the Diffraction tab shows your camera’s limit. For example, with a 24 mm lens at f/8 on full frame the hyperfocal distance is only 2.4 m, so focusing at 2.4 m keeps everything from 1.2 m to infinity sharp. The aperture-sweep table lets you compare every f-stop from f/1.4 to f/22 at a glance.

Four levers, in order of strength: (1) move closer to your subject — focus distance dominates; (2) open the aperture (smaller f-number); (3) use a longer focal length; (4) move the subject farther from the background. For instance, an 85 mm lens at f/1.8 focused at 5 m on full frame gives only 0.37 m of depth of field, and a background at infinity renders as a blur disk nearly 17× the circle of confusion. The Background blur estimator in the DoF tab quantifies this: it reports the background blur-circle diameter in multiples of your sensor’s circle of confusion, so you can compare lenses and apertures numerically.

At macro magnifications, depth of field depends on magnification and aperture, not focal length. The thin-lens approximation is: total DoF ≈ 2 × N × c × (1 + m) ÷ m², where m is magnification. At 1:1 (life size) with f/8 on full frame (CoC 0.03 mm), depth of field is only 2 × 8 × 0.03 × 2 ÷ 1 = 0.96 mm — less than a millimeter. At half life size (1:2) it quadruples to about 2.9 mm. Note that the effective f-number grows with magnification (effective f-number = N × (1 + m)), so f/8 at 1:1 behaves like f/16 for exposure and diffraction. The Macro tab above computes depth of field from your magnification directly.

Diffraction is the physical spreading of light through a small aperture: the Airy disk diameter = 2.44 × λ × N (λ ≈ 550 nm for green light). When the Airy disk grows larger than your sensor’s pixels, stopping down further adds no sharpness anywhere — the whole image softens. The commonly quoted diffraction-limited aperture is the f-number where the Airy disk reaches about twice the pixel pitch. For a Canon EOS R5 (4.39 µm pixels) that is about f/6.5; for a 61 MP Sony A7R V (3.79 µm pixels) about f/5.6; for a 24 MP full-frame body (6.0 µm pixels) about f/9. The Diffraction tab computes the limit for 9 popular camera bodies or your own pixel pitch, and compares the Airy disk at any aperture against your pixels.

Yes, through the circle of confusion. With the exact same lens, aperture, and focus distance, a smaller sensor measures a shallower depth of field — because its smaller CoC is a stricter sharpness criterion. Example: a 50 mm lens at f/2.8 focused at 3 m gives 0.61 m of depth of field on full frame (CoC 0.030 mm) but 0.38 m on Canon APS-C (CoC 0.019 mm), since the hyperfocal distance stretches from 29.76 m to 46.99 m. In real shooting, though, photographers compare equivalent framings: the crop body needs a shorter focal length or a longer shooting distance for the same composition, and that is what makes depth of field deeper on smaller sensors in practice. The sensor presets above let you see both effects numerically.

Crop factor is the ratio of the full-frame diagonal (43.27 mm) to your sensor’s diagonal. Multiply a lens’s actual focal length by the crop factor to get its 35 mm-equivalent field of view: a 25 mm lens on Micro Four Thirds (crop ≈ 2.0×) frames like a 50 mm on full frame; a 35 mm on Canon APS-C (crop ≈ 1.6×) frames like 56 mm; a 50 mm on medium-format GFX (crop ≈ 0.79×) frames like 40 mm. Crop factor describes angle of view, not a physical change in the lens. The Crop Factor tab converts any focal length across full frame, APS-C (Canon and Nikon/Sony), Micro Four Thirds, 1-inch, medium format, and large format.

Only as a rough rule of thumb — and often a misleading one. The near/far split depends on how the focus distance compares to the hyperfocal distance. At moderate distances the far limit stretches much farther than the near limit (e.g. 35 mm at f/8 focused at 3 m on full frame: near 1.89 m, far 7.28 m — roughly 1:4, not 1:2). At macro distances the split is nearly 50/50. At the hyperfocal distance it is exactly 1:2 (near = H/2, far = infinity). Rather than memorizing the rule, read the near and far limits the calculator reports — they are computed from the real formulas.

Yes — switch the unit toggle to imperial (ft) and enter focus distance in feet; all results (near limit, far limit, hyperfocal distance, total DoF) are shown in feet. The math is identical: inputs are converted to millimeters internally and results converted back, so a 50 mm lens at f/2.8 focused at 9.84 ft on full frame gives the same near limit 8.94 ft, far limit 10.95 ft, and hyperfocal distance 97.6 ft as the metric version.

Three compounding reasons: a tiny sensor (very small circle of confusion), a very short actual focal length (often 4–6 mm), and a slow-ish fixed aperture around f/1.8–f/2.8. Plug a 1-inch-sensor compact into this calculator — or imagine a phone’s ~5 mm lens at f/2 on a 1/1.3-inch sensor — and the hyperfocal distance lands under a meter, so nearly the whole scene sits inside the depth of field. Shallow depth of field on phones is mostly computational (portrait mode), not optical.

Most lenses are sharpest 2–3 stops down from wide open (often f/4–f/8), where aberrations have faded but diffraction has not yet bitten. Diffraction then softens the image progressively past the diffraction-limited aperture (about f/5.6–f/8 on high-resolution full-frame bodies, f/8–f/11 on 24 MP bodies — see the Diffraction tab for your camera). For maximum depth of field in landscapes, f/8–f/11 is usually the sweet spot; f/16–f/22 buys a little more DoF at the cost of overall sharpness. Compare both sides with the aperture-sweep table and the diffraction readout together.

dofmaster is the beloved classic — referenced by photography press for 20 years — but its website is a Windows-XP-era fossil that is hard to use on a phone. This tool is a modern, mobile-friendly depth of field studio: the same trusted formulas (verified against hand calculation — e.g. 50 mm, f/2.8, 3 m, full frame → near 2.73 m, far 3.34 m), plus six modes dofmaster never had: hyperfocal with zone-focusing tables, macro depth of field, a diffraction-limit analyzer with a real camera database, a crop-factor/equivalent-focal-length converter, an aperture-sweep comparison table (f/1.4–f/22), and a background-blur estimator — all 100% client-side with no sign-up.

No. This depth of field calculator runs 100% in your browser: every computation happens locally in JavaScript, and nothing you type — focal length, aperture, distances, camera — is sent to any server. There is no sign-up, no tracking of your inputs, and the page keeps working offline after the first load. (The only network requests a page can ever make are the page itself and its images; this tool loads no external scripts, fonts, or analytics.)