SharpStop Depth of Field Calc

Three numbers do not tell you what a photograph will look like. SharpStop draws the sharp zone instead. Near limit, focus, far limit — on one scale, so you can see how lopsided the zone is rather than working it out. And it always is lopsided: more of the sharpness falls behind your subject than in front of it, and how much more changes with every distance. The old "one third in front, two thirds behind" rule is only true near the hyperfocal distance. SharpStop tells you the real split. ONE TAP TO SHARP TO INFINITY Focus at the hyperfocal distance and everything from half of it to the horizon is acceptably sharp. That is the whole trick of landscape focusing, and it is one button — set for the lens and aperture you are actually on, not looked up on a card. FOUR TOOLS, ONE CAMERA Set the sensor and lens once and all four use it. Depth of field. The sharp zone drawn, with the hyperfocal distance, the near and far limits and the real front-to-back split. Field of view. What fits in frame at your subject distance, in metres or feet, with horizontal, vertical and diagonal angles and the frame drawn to your sensor's real aspect ratio. ND filters. What the shutter becomes with the filter on — shown in stops, optical density and ND factor at once, because your filter is marked in one of those three and it is never the one you wanted. Star trails. The NPF limit, which accounts for your aperture and pixel pitch, with the old 500 rule beside it so you can see how much it over-runs on a modern sensor. Six sensor formats from Micro Four Thirds to medium format, each with its own circle of confusion derived from the sensor diagonal rather than borrowed from full frame. BUILT FOR THE HOUR YOU ACTUALLY USE IT Amber on black, because a blue-white screen at 4am undoes twenty minutes of dark adaptation. WHAT IT IS NOT Depth of field is a criterion for acceptable sharpness in a normal-sized print, not a physical edge — at 100% on screen the limits will always look soft, and SharpStop says so rather than pretending otherwise. It does not meter light, know where the sun or the Milky Way will be, or account for lens breathing or focus shift. It has no camera connection and takes no photographs. One payment. No subscription, no account, no ads, and no network connection anywhere in it.