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Comment by justincormack | Hacker News Reader

There seem to be wider aperture small field lenses turning up eg f0.95, although they will have to be pretty big...

if you do the maths, depth of field depends on both the aperture and the sensor size. in other words, f1 on a smaller detector doesn't give the same depth of field as on a larger detector (for an object at the same distance).

i wrote about here, but i am not sure it's very clear http://www.acooke.org/cute/DepthofFie1.html

[edit: and so, for medium format, depth of field is more pronounced...]

Sure, thats why people are going for f1 or less vs the usual f2 or so on full frame.

But mirrored vs mirrorless is not directly related to sensor size, there are mirrorless full-frame cameras.

Shallow depth of field is of limited use and vastly overrated. I was shooting mostly with medium format TLR camera and there was always a problem getting greater dof, not shallower.

Greater dof is actually a big plus for many shooting styles and subjects.

Isn't that somewhat sweeping? Sure, for some types of photography, getting a shallow depth of field is rarely a concern, but in other disciplines, a shallow depth of field is highly desirable.

Many wedding and portrait photographers have at least experimented with the Brenizer Method[1], the sole purpose of which is to create an image with a shallower depth of field than is otherwise possible, and replicate the appearance of large-format photography.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brenizer_Method

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