depth of field technical exercise - attempts 2, 3 & 4

This afternoon I set about to do the technical exercise again. I wanted to shoot Wally who is Milla's most special friend in the world, waiting faithfully somewhere nearby Milla as she plays in the background. 

I played around with the different framing:

I liked this but wanted to see his ears.

This was good while the sun was behind a cloud but.....

.......when the sun came out everything was way too blown out on the chair.

In the end I chose this framing with Wally shaded slightly by the table..........however

f/stop 5.0

as I worked through the f/stops - I was getting a good difference in the depth of field but the afternoon sun hitting different areas within the frame was really playing making it difficult to get even meter levels and I felt each different aperture was not consistent enough. I also didn't like the composition at all once  looked at the pics inside and converted to greyscale. Too busy and cluttered.

f/stop 22

So I did the exercise again in a different position to try and counteract this.....

f/stop 2.0

............ but I thought the composition was good at the lower f/stops but began to look not as good as the apertures opened up and made everything available to the eye.  I was a bit limited with my angles to capture Milla playing in the background so decided to abandon this idea altogether as it was just not working. What I also noticed upon review later inside, when shooting from the shade into the sun here as I was - as my f/stop increased Wally seemed to become darker and darker in the foreground, even though the meter readings said it was just right. I  must have needed to adjust the ISO to counteract this.

f/stop 22

So I decided to wait until the sun was behind a cloud and choose an nice simple composition and what I noticed doing the exercise again (4th time now!) was - that with the even light conditions, every time I changed my f/stop setting to the next whole stop, I then had to adjust my shutter speed by the same 3 clicks each time on my meter reading. The results were very nice and even photographs where I was able to demonstrate hardly any difference in levels and tone at the different aperture settings - focusing purely on depth of field.

f/stop 22

f/stop 2.0

Doing this exercise over and over also meant by the time I got to shoot this last one - I didn't make any mistakes adjusting the shutter speed for each new f/stop. So the repetition has been great to ingrain that into me. I also now have a very clear understanding of how aperture effects depth of field.