I photographed these crocodiles at a reptile facility in Papua New Guinea. As you can see, I was shooting down on the animals from an oblique angle. The 'film plane' (with digital cameras it's really the plane of the digital sensor, i.e. the back of the camera) was not parallel with the plane of the crocs. Since I was using a medium telephoto lens, that meant that depth of field would be limited. In a picture like this, I felt that complete depth of field was essential to show all of the remarkable texture and detail that I could see with my eyes. Therefore, I used f/16. Whenever the back of the camera is not parallel to the plane of your subject(s), you'll get shallow DOF. The only way to deal with this problem, if in fact you want the entirety of the picture to be sharp, is to use a small aperture. That will most likely require a tripod because a small aperture means a slower shutter speed, especially when shooting in overcast conditions like I had in this shot.
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