Modern obsession with shallow depth of field

Modern photography has developed an unusual obsession: the blurrier the background, the better the photograph is perceived to be. Or, for people obsessing about gear—the smaller the f-number of the lens, the “better” it is.

This wasn’t always the case

My wife prefers shooting on film camera, specifically Nikon F3 – it’s a wonderful 1980s professional SLR that is precise, extremely well built (like a tank) and is a testament to creativity and professional craftsmanship of an era when cameras were expected to last decades.

Nikon F3 uses an F mount and normally takes what is called AI and AIs lenses (“AI” here thankfully standing for “Automatic Indexing”). Nikon F-mount was introduced in 1959 and remained in continuous use for over 60 years, making it one of the longest-lived lens mounts in history (replaced recently only with Mirrorless Nikon format).

And even though the AI and AIs lenses were superseded by AF, AF-D, AF-S, etc. , one of the F lenses is so popular that Nikon still makes them until now (2026).

That’s Nikkor 50mm f1.2 – created in 1981.

It’s a legendary lens for many reasons with one being its F-number of 1.2 – that number refers to the lens’s maximum aperture, i.e. the size of the opening through which light enters the camera. An aperture this large allows the lens to gather large amounts of light, making it possible to shoot in conditions that would be otherwise challenging, say indoors with non-direct lighting.

But light is only part of the story.

A wide opening in the lens like this does something else. it has extremely shallow depth of field – for example, when, shooting a subject 1 meter away, the 50mm f1.2 gives us a mere 2.6 cm of ( acceptable ) sharpness.

As a result, a narrow slice of reality where you put your focus appears sharp, while everything else blures out. The effect is unmistakable and is very well known by any person who ever saw a photograph with depth of field.

Used intentionally, it is a powerful creative tool, say for fashion photography or any other choices where it is used with intent.

Today, however this look has become deeply associated with what people perceive as “professional photography.”

And this raises a question that I want to talk about in the post:

How did an optical side effect become a visual ideal?

Needless to say, the shallow depth of field effect is not always practical.

With such a thin margin of focus, even small movements can shift the point of sharpness. For everyday photography, e.g. documentary work, street photography, or capturing moments as they unfold, photographers often would prefer lenses with default F numbers (if we are e.g. talking about 50mm lens) the f/1.8, f/2.0 or f/2.8. These lenses still allow strong subject separation, but provide more forgiving focus and greater consistency. More importantly, they are way lighter and smaller.

Also even when using lenses with f/1.2 most professional photographers (say photojournalists) would reduce the aperture or close it down to higher f-numbers like f/4 or f/8, increasing depth of field when more of the scene needs to remain in focus – essential when you want to tell a visual story rather than focus on one subject.

The race for better gear

What pushed me to sit down and write this post are modern camera and lens reviews. If you ever tried to follow a popular channel on YouTube and read a discussion on the internet about lens selection, one thing becomes immediately clear: shallow depth of field is treated as one of the most desirable characteristics a lens can have.

The ability to shoot at f/1.4, f/1.2, or even wider apertures is often presented as a defining feature. Reviewers emphasize background blur, subject separation, and “creamy bokeh” as indicators of quality.

Huge amount of time is spent discussing if a particular lens bokeh balls give a “cats eye” effect or not – and most likely nobody but the reviewers themselves care about that effect, when the overall picture is pleasing.

Comparison photos are frequently taken wide open, specifically to showcase how much the background can be dissolved into softness.

Meanwhile, other characteristics that have a far greater impact on everyday photography receive less attention!

Things like

How consistently the lens focuses.

How usable it is at typical working apertures like f/4 or f/8.

How close it can focus.

Finally, how SHARP it is. I have a favorite Leica lens in my possession, a Summarit 50mm f2.5 – a somewhat “budget” (for a Leica lens) lens. This lens is so sharp you can slice a feather if it falls on it. It makes incredible contrasty, punch pictures – if I were to be offered to replace its f number with 1.4 but forced to have less sharp images, I wouldn’t do it because then the pictures would lose their appeal completely.

The qualities above affect almost every photograph a person takes, while maximum aperture affects only some of them, and yet, it is often treated as the headline feature.

This creates a strange situation where lenses are evaluated primarily by their extreme capabilities, rather than by how they perform in normal use. A lens that can open to f/1.2 is perceived as inherently superior to one limited to f/2, even though the vast majority of photographs are not taken at f/1.2 (or rather I say, shouldn’t).

Historically, photographers were well aware of this.

Photographers in the 1930s, 40s, 50s – Cartier-Bresson (his photo of stairs and a bicycle is shared above), Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Helmut Newton – often shot stopped down. f/8, f/11, f/16. They wanted the world in focus – the subject and environment were inseparable because the context of the subject was important and the background gave the subject its meaning.

They chose their aperture based on what the image needed, not based on what the lens was capable of at its limits. Many photographs were intentionally taken stopped down, ensuring that the subject and its surroundings remained in focus together.

Fun fact, but George Lucas deliberately shot his earlier movies using stopped down lenses – look at Indiana Jones movies and see how much of the frame is in focus, even on the “headshots” scenes.

How did it happen?

Maybe it will be useful to remember the original purpose of ultra-fast lenses.

When legendary, wide-open glass like the Noctilux (year 1966 – the first Noctilux 50 f/1.2) hit the market, the goal wasn’t to turn the background into a mush. These lenses were born out of pure necessity.

Photographers were shooting on incredibly slow film stocks (400 ASA / ISO was the fastest one and if you wanted faster, you’d have to Push it in development) and needed massive apertures just to expose a frame in low light without dropping shutter speeds to an unusable level.

So the shallow depth of field was a consequence of the compromise, rather than a deliberate creative choice.

Nowadays, with full-frame digital sensors the dramatic background blur that used to require specialized, heavy gear are in the hands of prosumers and enthusiasts. Because a shallow depth of field is visually striking it kinda became the easiest way for new photographers to differentiate their work from standard point-and-shoots.

And I want to re-emphasize that I do not say that using a shallow depth of field as a creative tool is wrong – again, for some professional work, like a wedding, fashion or journalistic work it is completely justified – a shallow depth of field sometimes is the only option to isolate your subject.

I also feel that FOMO for shallow DoF was not the only catalyst for the obsession with low F numbers – social media heavily rewards images with instant, easily digestible visual impact – a small phone screen doesn’t really leave much opportunities, PHYSICALLY, to look at the image in detail or observe background context.

In this environment, obliterating the background is the cheat code for likes and attention. A photo with one isolated subject is frankly, the perfect format for social media on small screen devices. And people do consume social media primarily via their phones.

Computational Photography

The final push came from the smartphones in our pockets. When tech giants introduced “Portrait Mode,” they trained their algorithms to artificially mimic the bokeh of wide-open prime lenses. By applying this fake blur to millions of everyday snapshots, the tech industry effectively re-educated the general public’s eye. So from a photographic technique, a “shallow DoF” had become the universally accepted, default standard for what makes a “good” photo.

Possible ways out

1. Embrace Environmental Portraiture

   
   

   The easiest way to break the bokeh addiction is to start treating the background as a co-star rather than a distraction. Use the environment to tell the story!

   
   

The “f/8 and Be There” Challenge

Try this: tape your aperture dial to f/8 for an entire week. The legendary photojournalism adage, “f/8 and be there,” exists for a reason – when your lens is at its sharpest and you no longer can rely on a paper-thin focal plane to artificially isolate your subject, you will be forced to physically move your feet and hunt for the right angle, and focus on capturing a moment.

Stop Consuming Media Solely on Your Phone

We have to acknowledge that the medium dictates the message. If you consume 90% of our photography on a 6-inch smartphone screen, try to sit down at a proper, color-calibrated monitor, or better yet, open a high-quality photo book. You’ll quickly realize that images with a deep depth of field and intricate, edge-to-edge details offer a much richer, more rewarding experience when you actually have the visual real estate to explore them. Better yet, go to a photo-gallery or a museum! Which brings me to the next point…

And Print Your Photos There is no harsher critic of your work than a physical print. When you blow an image up to a nice A2 or A1 format hang it on a wall you bring it to the physical world rather than look at it using your screen. This changes things – having a physical media in front of you, a large media often, larger than whatever screen you were using before – will force you to re-evaluate the picture, in all the small details, grain and imperfections (which are what makes human art art to be fair).

Finally, Explore New Formats If your current full-frame camera and f/1.4 prime lens are enabling your bokeh addiction, it might be time to change the tools. Step away from the gear that makes a shallow depth of field the path of least resistance.

Pick up a manual camera, medium format or a rangefinder, where the manual focus will force you to slow down AND where the lack of the of autofocus will make focusing with a shallow DoF a huge hassle.

Conclusion

Photography is a super accessible and wonderful art hobby that anyone can practice. But like any art, you – an artist – need to make it your own. Don’t blindly follow the current trend, experiment, learn from the great artists of the past and have fun. Thanks for reading.