Improving Optical Performance - Nikon D800 Technical Data Manual

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3. Improving Optical Performance

3. Improving Optical Performance
Stopping aperture down increases depth of fi eld, making the
foreground and background sharper. Stop aperture down
too far, however, and diff raction will actually cause the image
to lose defi nition. The eff ects of diff raction are partly infl u-
enced by the size of the pixels in the camera image sensor,
but with the D800/D800E's high resolution the eff ects gen-
erally become noticeable around f/11. When you need more
depth of fi eld, don't just immediately stop the lens all the way
down; instead, look for the aperture that off ers the best bal-
ance between sharpness and depth of fi eld. In the examples
on this page, you can see the grid lose defi nition as aperture
is stopped down past f/11.
f/8
f/16
f/11
f/22
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