What Is Lens Diffraction In Photography And How Does It Affect Your Shooting

On this video photographer Steve Perry (from backcountrygallery) looks at two tricks for straightening the horizon in landscape images in Photoshop.

Perry’s video are always educational and this one is no exception. This time around he looks at lens diffraction and it’s influence on our images. Now if you have no idea what diffraction is or what it does this is the video you should be watching. Even if you are familiar with the affects of diffraction this video might show you a couple of things that might surprise you.

Lets start with diffraction. In optics diffraction is the result of stopping down your lens – the more you stop down the softer the image you will get. On many of today’s cameras you will not notice diffraction too much before f/16, but as sensors get more MegaPixels you might start to see the effects even at f/11 (and with super high resolution cameras even before that). Does this mean that you should not shoot closed down? well, it depends. If you want maximum detail and maximum sharpness – and you can live with the depth of field that you are getting – sticking to around f/8 at most might be your best bet. However if you do need the depth of field (in landscape images for example) you have no choice – you will loose some sharpness (which Perry demonstrates that you can partially recover in post) but you will get the image that you want (you can’t recover depth of field in post.

There are many interesting examples and comparisons in this video and even experienced photographers might learn something new so make sure you watch the full video.

You can check out many more helpful photography tips on our Photography tips section here on LensVid. We have a special page dedicated to Perry ‘s videos which you can find here.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.