DOFCalc for Phones

Depth of Field Calculator for Film and Digital SLR Cameras

DOFCalc is a depth of field calculator for 35mm film SLR and digital SLR cameras that runs on mobile phones. This small J2ME program can run on all phones that support CLDC 1.1 or later, allowing you to calculate the depth of field in the, erm, field.

Most people who carry a camera also carry a mobile phone. So it seems only natural to develop a DoF calculator that can run on a phone!

Download DoF Calculator

Download DOFCalc.jar and DOFCalc.jad
or source code DOFCalc.java

Screenshots

DOFCalc DOFCalc DOFCalc

The screenshots should give you a pretty good idea of how this works. It's generally suitable for any camera that can use a 35mm SLR lens - all you have to do is enter the focal length of your lens, the aperture you are using, and the distance to the subject you are taking a photo of. The program will then tell you what the depth of field is.

This program is suitable for use with:

Any brand of 35mm SLR film camera.
Any Canon digital SLR.
Any Nikon digital SLR.
Probably any other digital SLR that can use 35mm format lenses.

Each time you run the program, it will remember the settings you used previously, saving you from having to fill in all of the fields more than once.

If you are using a digital SLR, you may need to change the "Sensor Crop" value. This is a ratio that shows the size of the sensor compared with the size of a 35mm film frame (so-called "full frame"). Film cameras do not have any crop, so the value should be set to 1.0; conversely, digital SLRs such as the Canon 350D have a digital sensor which is approximately 1.6 times smaller than a full frame, so the value should be set to 1.6. Your camera manual should tell you what your crop factor is, but here are the crop factors of a few of the more popular models:

1.0 sensor crop (i.e. full frame): All film SLRs, Canon 1Ds, Canon 1Ds II
1.3 sensor crop: Canon 1D, Canon 1D II
1.5 sensor crop: Nikon D70
1.6 sensor crop: Canon 300D, Canon D60, Canon D30, Canon 350D, Canon 20D, Canon 10D

Using my Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS to take photos of superbikes approaching from about 20 metres away, I used this program to tell me that the depth of field at f/4 was only about 37cm. This let me know that I had enough DoF to get the driver's heads in focus, but I would have needed to stop down to get the whole bike in as well.

Do you use this software? Let me know - it's always nice to hear from people who have found this a useful tool.

I have also written some other J2ME MIDlets.

Licensing

This software product is OSI Certified Open Source Software, available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Since the GPL may be too restrictive for use in proprietary applications, a commercial license is also provided.

Purchase a commercial license for this software.

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