DOF Comparison Using Constant Shutter Speed

Most experienced photographers know that the shutter speed does not factor into depth of field. However, since changing the aprature often prompts another change in order to maintain the same exposure, some people seem to have associated a shutter speed change with the change in DOF that resulted from the aperture change. Therefore, I did the following test, using a strobe with power settings from 1/64 to full power, and I varied the power on the strobe to compensate for the change in aperture, rather than varying the shutter speed (or ISO).

You can click on the pictures below to see the EXIF data associated with each one.


f11 @ 1/60th second

f1.8 @ 1/60th second

If there is still any doubt about what controls depth of field, please reference the related Wikipedia article.

Please note that the calculation for the range of the depth of field does not account for shutter speed, because it is not a factor in Depth of Field.