Depth of Field (DoF) describes how much of a scene appears acceptably sharp in front of and behind the point of focus. It is a result of an interaction between focal length, aperture, subject distance and sensor size. Because these variables are tightly coupled, intuitive comparisons, especially across different camera formats, are often misleading.
Sensor size is a common source of confusion. It changes the field of view for a given focal length, affecting framing and perceived background blur. Matching composition across formats requires adjusting focal length or camera distance, which directly alters depth of field, so identical f-numbers can produce very different DoF results.
This simulator is allowing you to compare lenses and sensor sizes under controlled, equivalent conditions, it helps visualize how depth of field, angle of view, and blur scale together.
Sensor Sizes
Depth of Field Simulator
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Click help for instructions!
Add Foreground Photo
Use color picker and range slider to make background transparent!
Select the lenses (one for each sensor format) that you want to compare.
Framing and blur will be rendered proportional to lens f-stop, focal length and camera sensor format/size.
Distance Selection
The option Show equal framing means that the distance to the subject will be adjusted proportional to the crop factor.
If the subject distance for Full Frame (FF) is 5 meters, the distance for APS-C will be 1.5 x 5 = 7.5 meters and 2 x 5 = 10 meters for MFT.
The option Show equal distance means that distance to the subject will be the same for all lenses, no matter what lens is selected.
Add Foreground Photo
Add a foreground photo to the lens simulation view by clicking the "Add Foreground Photo" button.
Make it transparent by picking a color (typically the sky) and use the range slider to select a color range.
Note that the photo is only added to your browser locally, NOT uploaded to any server.
Depth of Field (DoF) Chart at full F-stop.
The DoF chart shows the depth of field per lens and sensor size.
X-axis: relative distance to he point of focus in centimeters (1 cm = 10 mm).
Y-axis: blur diameter in pixels. The blur diameter will inrease moving away from the point of focus.
The slope of the curve represents how fast the amount of visible background blur is increasing.
FF will produce a shorter DoF than APS-C and MFT when the focal length, aperture and framing are equal.
Circle of confusion (CoC) / Sensor size Charts
The circle of confusion (CoC) is the diameter of the blur spot formed on the sensor when a point in the scene is not perfectly in focus. For a given lens, aperture, and focus error, this blur size is fixed by optics.
Pixel size does not change the CoC, it determines how finely that blur is sampled. As pixels get smaller, the same optical blur spans more pixels and becomes easier to see.
The CoC chart shows how physical CoC relates to different pixel sizes, illustrating when blur is effectively hidden by sampling and when it becomes perceptible.
