Three-Point Lighting for 3D Renderings

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Adapted & Shortened from

Digital Lighting & Rendering

By Jeremy Birn

Three lights: the Key Light, Fill Light, and Back Light, are adjusted to achieve the classic
Hollywood lighting scheme called three-point lighting.

This GIF Animation shows the role of the 3 lights.

Here's how to set them up in your 3D scenes:

1. Start in Darkness. Make sure there are no default lights, and there's no global ambience.
When you add your first light, there should be no other light in the scene.
2. Add your Key Light. The Key Light creates the subject's main illumination, and defines the
most visible lighting and shadows. Your Key Light represents the dominant light source, such
as the sun, a window, or ceiling light - although the Key does not have to be positioned
exactly at this source.
Create a spot light to serve as the Key. From the top view, offset the Key Light 15 to 45
degrees to the side (to the left or right) of the camera. From a side view, raise the Key Light
above the camera, so that it hits your subject from about 15 to 45 degrees higher than the
camera angle.

The key light is brighter than any other light illuminating the front of the subject, is the main
shadow-caster in your scene, and casts the darkest shadows. Specular highlights are
triggered by the Key Light.
NOTE: Be sure to stop and do test-renders here. Your "one light" scene (with just the key
light) should have a nice balance and contrast between light and dark, and shading that uses
all of the grays in between. Your "one light" should look almost like the final rendering, except
that the shadows are pitch black and it has very harsh contrast - see the GIF animation at the
top of this page, while it only has the Key light visible.
3. Add your Fill Light(s). The Fill Light softens and extends the illumination provided by the
key light, and makes more of the subject visible. Fill Light can simulate light from the sky
(other than the sun), secondary light sources such as table lamps, or reflected and bounced
light in your scene. With several functions for Fill Lights, you may add several of them to a

scene. Spot lights are the most useful, but point lights may be used.
From the top view, a Fill Light should come from a generally opposite angle than the Key - if
the Key is on the left, the Fill should be on the right - but don't make all of your lighting 100%
symmetrical! The Fill can be raised to the subject's height, but should be lower than the Key.

At most, Fill Lights can be about half as bright as your Key (a Key-to-Fill ratio of 2:1). For
more shadowy environments, use only 1/8th the Key's brightness (a Key-to-Fill ratio of 8:1). If
multiple Fills overlap, their sum still shouldn't compete with the Key.
Shadows from a Fill Light are optional, and often skipped. To simulate reflected light, tint the
Fill color to match colors from the environment. Fill Lights are sometimes set to be Diffuseonly (set not to cast specular highlights.)
4. Add Back Light. The Back Light (also called Rim Light) creates a "defining edge" to help
visually separate the subject from the background.
From the top view, add a spot light, and position it behind your subject, opposite from the
camera. From the right view, position the Back Light above your subject.

Adjust the Back Light until it gives you a nice "rim" of light, that highlights the top or side edge
for your subject. (Some people call a light that highlights the side edge a rim light.) Back
Lights can be as bright as necessary to achieve the glints you want around the hair or sides of
your subject. Unless you can avoid the need for shadows with careful aiming, a bright Back
Light often needs to cast shadows.
A Back Light is not a background light - all a Back Light does is create a rim of light around
the top or side of your subject, as shown below:

No Back Light (left), Back Light added (right).

That's it. Three-Point Lighting is a versatile & popular starting-point for lighting just about any
subject, from a prop to a movie star.
The new 2nd edition of Digital Lighting & Rendering goes into much more depth about 3D
lighting and professional rendering techniques.
http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html

Basic 3 Point Lighting

Before we begin looking at an example let's consider what the function of lighting is. Lighting can
be used to add mood and drama to a shot, but it's overriding function is to describe 3D objects onto
a 2D area, be that a computer monitor, a print out or a cinema screen. To put it another way, the
light is used to "model" the objects so that on a flat surface we can tell what shape they are, and
how one object relates to another. When considering what makes good lighting we need to balance
the aesthetic requirements of the shot, lightness/darkness, colour etc. against the need to be able to
see what is going on in order that the narrative may be advanced.
OK, so we know we want to model the objects with light, so their shapes become apparent to us,
but how do we do that? To begin with take a torch and in a darkened room shine a light on different

objects and see how they take the light and how much of their shape is revealed to us. For example
if you light something front on, you will be able to make out its outline but shapes within that
outline may not be so obvious. If you place the light above and slightly to one side the shape will
probably be better defined. This main light is THE most important light as its placement influences
all others. It is known as the KEY LIGHT. Let's look at a specific example.

THE KEY LIGHT

By placing the key light above and to the left we can see the volume of the oranges (i.e. that they're sp
are on the floor by the shadows cast and that they are stacked on top of each other. However the imag
regions and is a bit brutal. In order to fix this we need to add another light to the right of the oranges t
darkened areas. This light is called the FILL LIGHT. Let's look at what this light contributes to the sc

THE FILL LIGHT

The job of the fill light is to illuminate those areas of the image which are in shadow when the key lig
obvious therefore that the fill light is placed after and in relation to the key light. As the job of the fill
detail it should not be as intense as the key light. Look at this example; the key light is about 2-3 time
look at how the key and fill light work together.

KEY AND FILL

The image now looks a lot better than it did with just a key light. The image has more depth and detai
washed out. However there is something more we can add. The right side of the oranges are getting a
order to counteract this we can add a RIM LIGHT.

THE RIM LIGHT

The rim light is placed behind the objects being illuminated and is angled so that the light glances off
narrowest angle. The intensity of this light is often quite high, often brighter than the key. Due to its in
line of bright light around the object and in doing so lifts the object away from the background. The r
that a dark object does not blend in with a dark background. OK now the lighting is complete let's exa

THE FINISHED RENDER

The rim light has lifted the oranges away from the background, the orange at the bottom right was in
background but is much better modelled now. The image still has contrast and a good range of tones f
floor shadows and the shadowing of one orange onto another are still there showing each object's rela
detail even in the shadow areas on the fruit. All that's left to do is a little bit of tweaking in post.

THE FINISHED IMAGE

By adding a subtle glow to the strongest high-lights (those created by the rim light) and by
softening the image to limit that super-crisp "CG look" the image can be improved a little more.
You can tweak an image indefinitely like this by adding noise and so on but I've decided to leave
it like this.

In the above example we have taken a look at the most basic, yet flexible lighting set-up which,
with tweaks to the intensities, can be used to light almost any situation. This does not mean that you
shouldn't experiment with light placement as long as you remember to place the key light first and
let the other lights take their cue from it. Look at the work of the great painters of light like Vermeer
or Rembrandt or at photographers like Irving Penn or Horst P. Horst or the great cinematographers
like Gregg Toland or Gordon Willis.
One book I really recommend is "Painting with Light" by the late, great John Alton. This book is
over 50 years old now but is still the best reference work on lighting for film. I got the idea of using
oranges as my "models" for this tutorial from him. As you can tell we have only covered the
tonality of light here. I'll probably do another tutorial when I get the chance covering colour and
lighting. I hope this has proved useful to you and given you some ideas of your own about the art of
lighting.

Matching Real Lighting

Matching lighting which is part of a photographed background is a staple art of Technical

Directors and FX artists. It is an art more than a science and the techniques I present here will
merely begin to get you thinking along the right lines when you have to tackle such an
assignment. It will take a lot of practice to be able to convincingly match real world lighting. This
technique uses no raytracing, no Global Illumination and no HDRI. This is because in real-world
production it is usually prohibitively time consuming to render using these techniques. The
majority of FX shots you see in film are produced using nothing more sophisticated than depthmap shadows and reflection and environment maps.
OK, so how do we tackle this problem? Well the first thing to do is have a good look at your
background plate. For this shot I had been asked to add an CG aircraft taking off to a
photographed backplate. I had been given no reference images and no tracking data. I duplicated
the shot's camera move by hand in Maya and I animated the aircraft to the CG camera move. Once
this was done It was time to look at the plate and extract the information I would need to light the
CG elements in the shot.

Scene Black

Film and video seldom represent true black in their images. In this plate the circled area is scene black
looking at the pixel values shows that the average shadowed pixel is roughly R=30, G=29, B=32. The
my CG lighting become darker than that, as it will stand out when it is composited. To achieve this I a

The Ambient Pass

Here is a render showing the ambient light's contribution to the scene. This is as dark as the CG eleme
one ambient light tinted to match the slightly blueish cast of the shadows in the background plate.

Key Light Direction

As I had been given no reference for this scene it was necessary to estimate the light direction from o
plate. This water fountain's shadows gave a good indication of the angle and intensity of the key light
match this angle.

Key Light Colour

This area of wall which is actually only just off-white indicates that the key light should be an orange
idea to find an object in direct light in your backplate which is close to white as this will give you you
be given to the keylight.

The Keylight Pass

Here is the render of the key light's contribution to the scene. Its intensity, direction and colour are all
background plate. Now all that's left to do is add the fill light to the scene.

The Fill Light Pass

Adding the fill lights is a bit of a black art. There is no rule of thumb on this other than that they are g
ground or walls in a scene (they represent bounced light after all) and that generally they are placed in
light. Using the backplate as reference, keep adding fill light till the ratio between light and shade loo
backdrop.

The Complete Render

Once all ambient, key and fill light passes are combined they look like this. All that now remains is to
background plate and to add any effects passes, like particles for example, to complete the shot.

The Finished Shot

By adding some noise to the CG elements, blurring their edges and tweaking the values of the colour
composite can be produced. Rendering all the passes as separate elements gives your more control ov
mean you can increase or decrease the amount of key or fill by tweaking the individual layers rather t
sequence again from scratch. This sequence also has a particle pass rendered from the exhausts which
some heat haze to the background plate.

http://www.andrew-whitehurst.net/fx_light.html

Table of Contents
Chapter One: Fundamentals of Lighting Design
Motivation 2
Off-Screen Space 2
Qualities of Light 3
Direct and Indirect Light 5
Cheating 5
Cheating in Live Action 8
Visual Goals of Lighting Design 8
Making Things Read 9
Making Things Believable 9
Enhancing Shaders and Effects 10
Maintaining Continuity 10
Directing the Viewers Eye 11
Emotional Impact 11
Lighting Challenges 12

Your Workspace 14
Creative Control 15
Chapter Two: Lighting Basics & Good Practices
Starting Points 18
Types of Lights 19
Point Lights 19
Spotlights 20
Directional Lights 23
Area Lights 24
Models Serving as Lights 26
Environment Spheres 27
Ambient Light 27
Controls and Options 29
Decay 29
Diffuse and Specular 33
Light Linking 35
Cookies 36
Lighting in Production 38
When to Light 38
The Feedback Loop 38
Naming Lights 40
Managing Versions 40
Exercises 41
Chapter Three: Shadows & Occlusion
The Visual Functions of Shadows 44
Defining Spatial Relationships 44
Revealing Alternate Angles 45
Enhancing Composition 46
Adding Contrast 46
Indicating Off-Screen Space 47
Integrating Elements 48
Which Lights Need Shadows? 49
Shadow Clutter 49
Secondary Shadows 50
Shadow Color 51
Testing Shadows 52
Shadow Size and Perspective 53
Shadow Algorithms 55
Depth Map Shadows 55
Raytraced Shadows 62
Hard and Soft Shadows 65
Hard and Soft Light 67
Soft Shadows with Depth Maps 68
Soft Raytraced Shadows 70
Occlusion 73
Ambient Occlusion 73
Occlusion in Global Illumination 74

Other Types of Occlusion 76

Faking Shadows 77
Negative Lights 77
Shadows-Only Lights 78
Shadow Objects 80
Baking Lighting 81
Conclusions 83
Exercises 83
Chapter Four: Lighting Environments & Architecture
Daylight 86
Sunlight 86
Sky Light 89
Indirect Light 92
Night Scenes 94
Practical Lights 96
Lighting the Light 96
Set Lighting from Practical Lights 97
Lighting Windows 99
Simulating Indirect Light 101
Corners 105
Sourcy Lighting 107
Global Illumination 108
Conventional Radiosity 112
Photon Mapping 113
Final Gathering 115
Caustics 116
Ambient Occlusion 120
Exercises 123
Chapter Five: Lighting Creatures, Characters, and Animation
Modeling with Light 126
Directionality 127
Definition 128
Three-Point Lighting 131
Variations 133
Tools, Not Rules 134
Functions of Lights 134
Key Lights 135
Fill Lights 136
Bounce Lights 139
Rim Lights 140
Kickers 144
Specular Lights 145
Issues in Lighting Character Animation 146
Test Frames 147
Linking Lights to Characters 147
Technology Changes 148
Subsurface Scattering 150
Lighting Hair 153

Lighting Eyes 154

Exercises 157
Chapter Six: Cameras & Exposure
Understanding F-Stops and Depth of Field 160
Matching Real Lenses 162
The Two-Thirds Rule 163
Hyperfocal Distance 163
Bokeh Effects 164
Frame Rates 165
Realistic Motion Blur 165
Shutter Speed and Shutter Angle 165
The Comet Tail Myth 168
Blurring Rotations 169
Video Fields 170
Film Speed 172
Photographic Exposure 173
The Zone System 174
Histograms 175
Matching Lens Imperfections 177
Lens Distortion 177
Chromatic Aberration 180
Vignetting 180
Lens Flares and Halation 181
Exercises 182
Chapter Seven: Composition & Staging
Types of Shots 186
Shot Sizes 186
Z-Axis Blocking 188
POV Shots 188
The Two-Shot 189
The Over-the-Shoulder Shot 190
Camera Angles 191
The Line of Action 191
Perspective 192
High-Angle and Low-Angle Shots 195
Camera Moves 196
Improving Your Composition 198
The Rule of Thirds 199
Positive and Negative Space 200
Graphic Weight 201
Lines 202
Tangencies 203
Framing for Film and Video 204
Formats and Aspect Ratios 204
Film Formats 205
Adaptation to Television 208
Cropping and Overscan 209

Exercises 210
Chapter Eight: The Art & Science of Color
Color Mixing 214
Additive Color 214
Subtractive Color 215
Hue, Saturation, and Value Adjustments 216
When Light Color Meets Surface Color 217
Color Schemes 220
Color Contrast 221
Meanings of Colors 224
Color and Depth 227
Tinted Black-and-White Images 228
Color Balance 229
Color Temperature 231
Picking Colors from Pictures 236
Understanding RGB Color 237
Importance of Red, Green, and Blue 239
Digital Color 240
8-bit Color 240
16-bit Color 241
HDRI 241
Compact Data Formats 243
Exercises 245
Chapter Nine: Shaders & Rendering Algorithms
Shading Surfaces 248
Diffuse, Glossy, and Specular Reflection 248
Specular Highlights 251
BRDF and BSSRDF 258
Anti-Aliasing 259
Over-Sampling 259
Under-Sampling 262
Filtering 263
Rendering at Higher Resolutions 263
Raytracing 264
Raytracing Acceleration Structures 265
Raytraced Reflections 266
Shadows 269
Transparency and Refraction 270
Reyes Algorithms 274
The Renderman Interface Standard 275
Reyes and Raytracing 276
Z-Buffer Rendering 277
Scanline Rendering 277
GPU-Accelerated and Hardware Rendering 278
Hardware Rendering 278
GPU Acceleration 278
Interactive Previewing 279

Exercises 280
Chapter Ten: Designing & Assigning Textures
Types of Texture Mapping 284
Color Mapping 284
Specular Mapping 286
Incandescence Mapping 287
Transparency Mapping 288
Displacement Mapping 290
Bump Mapping 291
Normal Mapping 293
Polynomial Texture Mapping 295
Other Mapping Techniques 295
Photographic Textures 296
Shooting Tips 296
Flatbed Scans 299
Stylized Textures 299
Texture Map Resolution 302
Alignment Strategies 304
Tiling Maps 304
Decals 310
Projections 313
UV Coordinates 317
Texturing Poles 321
3D Paint Programs 323
Procedural Textures 324
Resolution Independence 324
3D Textures 324
Animation 325
Appearance 325
Baking Procedural Textures into Texture Maps 326
Looks Development 328
Painting in Layers 328
Color First 329
Displacement First 330
Exercises 332
Chapter Eleven: Rendering Passes & Compositing
Rendering in Layers 336
Background Layers 337
Matte Objects 338
Effects Layers 339
Alpha Channel Issues 342
Compositing With Straight Alpha Channels 343
Compositing With Premultiplied Alpha Channels 345
Rendering in Passes 347
Diffuse Passes 348
Specular Passes 349
Reflection Passes 350
Shadow Passes 353

Ambient Passes 358

Occlusion Passes 359
Beauty Passes 360
Global Illumination Passes 361
Mask Passes 362
Depth Passes 363
Pass Management Features 365
Rendering Many Passes at Once 366
Lighting in the Composite 366
Rendering Lights as Separate Passes 367
Relighting Tools 368
Matching Live-Action Background Plates 369
Reference Balls and Light Probes 370
Other Approaches to Matching Lighting 373
Exercises 375
Chapter Twelve: Production Pipelines & Professional Practices
Production Pipelines 378
Planning an Animated Feature 378
Story 378
Layout 379
Preparing for Visual Effects Shots 380
Previsualization 380
Match Move and Virtual Sets 381
Rotoscoping 383
Art Department 385
Modeling 386
Set Decorating 387
Technical Directors 388
Character Rigging 389
Character Animation 390
Effects 390
Shading 391
Texture Paint 392
Lighting 393
Compositing 394
Film I/O 395
Visualizing Production Pipelines 395
Getting Work Approved 397
Working with Clients 397
Setting Expectations 397
Dealing with Changes 398
Supervising Lighters 399
The Chain of Command 400
Getting a Job in 3D Lighting 400
A Lighting Showreel 401
Credits 402
Quality over Quantity 403
Starting Strong 403
Do I Need to Specialize? 404

Internal Promotion 405

Job Security 406
Advancing in Your Career 407
Index
Digital Lighting & Rendering on-line content Copyright 2006 by Jeremy Birn. Selected figures and
text on 3dRender.com by permission of Publisher. Software including Autodesk 3D Studio Max, Maya,
NewTek Lightwave 3D, Cinema 4D, Softimage XSI, Apple Shake, Adobe Photoshop, Mental Ray, and
Pixar Renderman are trademarks of their owners.
http://www.3drender.com/light/dlr2TOC.htm

To most independent film-makers (including myself) lighting is one of the biggest bitches that you have
to consider. Sure, none of us have any money to buy fancy, professional stage lighting so why bother at
all, right?
Wrong! Put in plain and simply, unless you are working outdoors on the brightest of days you will need
some form of light or else your footage will look shit. Really shit. Most camcorders will burst into
grain if there is not enough light. Those that don't turn grainy will just be black. Either way, it's bad
news for you.
Many first-time filmmakers don't realise why they need any extra lights. They usually think "It seems
bright enough to me" - a fatal mistake! The human eyes can see much, much better in the dark than a
camcorder so even when it looks bright, your camcorder will probably only see about half of the
available light.
So you need extra lights. Cheap ones. This will be covered in a future tutorial because before you buy
some lights, you need to understand the theory of how to light your scenes correctly.
THREE POINT LIGHTING
With a three-point lighting setup, you usually can't go wrong. It is the very basic of lighting setups
which will give your images added depth and prevent that all dreaded grain from creeping into your
movie. As the name suggests, you will need three sources of light:
Key Light
This is your main light. The key light is a hard light source, which is placed to one side of the camera and up high. It's light
can be likened to the light from the sun on a clear day - a bright light with hard-edged shadows. It provides excellent
modeling in that it highlights the shape and contours of the subject.

Fill Light
The fill light is a soft light source, which is usually placed on the other side of the camera from the key (but closer to the
camera), and at about the camera's height. It's light can be likened to indirect sunlight reflected light from the environment.
It provides the filling in the shadows light in that it lowers the contrast between light and dark in the image, and it casts
very soft indistinct shadows.

Back Light
The back light is a hard light source like the key, but it is usually a smaller light and it is shone from behind the subject. It's
light is purely for modeling effect, in that it helps overcome the two-dimensional film image and makes the subject stand
out from the background. It is sometimes referred to as the highlight as it is often used to give a sheen or highlight to an
actor's hair.

SEEING IT ALL IN ACTION:

KEY LIGHT ONLY

Here is our computer generated apple. We can
clearly see that the key light has been placed to
the right of the camera and has created very
sharp shadows. Looks okay but doesn't show
any real depth.

FILL LIGHT ONLY

Remember the fill light usually is on the
opposite side of the camera from the key (so in
this case it is on the left). As it should be a soft
light (created by use of filters or diffusers) the
effect is similar to the key except the shadows
are less defined. Plus the apple looks flat and
crap.

KEY + FILL
Merging the key and fill together instantly gives
us that all important depth making the image
feel more three-dimensional.

BACKLIGHT ONLY
The backlight, as seen here, provides very subtle
highlighting to the main subject.

KEY + FILL + BACK

Beautiful! What a stunning apple.

If you do you lighting correctly, no one in the audience will even notice it. Lighting is one of those
thankless but essential tasks that an audience demands but they don't realise it (they will just think in
the back of their minds that something doesn't look quite right). Remember, you are most likely gonna
be shooting on a consumer/prosumer camcorder which by its nature looks like video so you have your
work cut out for you to deceive the audience into thinking its a more expensive camera.
THE THEORY OUT THE WAY BUT NOW WHAT?
Well that's up to you. Soon I will have up a guide on purchasing cheap lighting for your own
productions which should help you save a few bucks. Other than that, another essential part of film
lighting is to also understand your own camcorder settings.
There are numerous controls on a camcorder that can drastically effect the final image (for the worse if
you don't know what you're doing) so now is the time to dust off the manual and learn about your
cameras optics.
The main areas you want to look at are: White Balance, Exposure (Iris) and Depth of Field.
Am I going to explain any of these now? NO!!!! This tutorial was just for basic lighting. Keep checking
back on the website and eventually I'll put a guide up on each of them (when I find an intelligent way
of explaining them!).
AND DON'T FORGET...
This is just a basic lighting setup which will create neutral results. If you were shooting a horror movie
or some kind of thriller, you definitely want to experiment more with the lights. For example, if your
character is looking through a window, shining a key light through some blinds onto her can create an
excellent effect. But this is just one example of endless set-ups. It is really down to time and creativity.
When it all boils down to it, the audience is more concerned about a good story than anything else.

DEPTH OF FIELD The area within your image which a subject can move back and forth whilst remaining in
focus APERTURE The amount of light let into the camcorder, controlled by the Iris a.k.a. Aperture, measured in FStops FOCAL LENGTH The angle of the lens e.g. a wide angle lens would achieve a greater Depth Of Field than a
smaller lens

I'm a bit thick when it comes to explaining the technical side of Depth Of Field but I'm going to give it
a go anyway...
Depth of Field (DOF) is an element of photography that amateur camcorder users rarely consider. It's a
shame considering that as setting the DOF correctly on a camcorder for each shot can drastically alter
the tone and feel of the footage.
DOF is the area within your image that a subject could freely move about whilst remaining in focus. If
you were to imagine a football game and you were standing by the net of one team looking across the
pitch at all the players spread around, if all the players were in focus then this would be a very large
Depth Of Field. Taking the opposite approach, if you were still standing in the same position but only
the players within 20-30 feet of you were in focus then you would have a smaller/shallower DOF.
DOF is determined by three factors: The distance at which the subject is in relation to the camera lens,
the lens aperture/iris and the lens angle.
Subject Distance
Whatever you might be filming, be it the local wildlife, your child's first steps or even the neighbours
dog taking a dump on the driveway, the distance at which the subject is from the camera affects DOF. If
your subject is very close to the camera then you will instantly have a shallow/small depth of field
because your camcorder can't see anything else. However, the further away the subject is the wider the
depth of field will be and the more things that will come into focus depending on the status of the two
other elements of DOF.
Lens Aperture/Iris
Not all camcorders allow you to manually control the aperture/iris but the better ones do. The more
light you allow into the camera through the iris, the shallower the depth of field you will have and
likewise the opposite is true. The light reaching the camera through the iris is measured in F-Stops such
as F1.4, F2.0, F2.8, F4.0 etc. The bigger the number, the less light that is getting through the iris.
Big, fast sporting events would be filmed with a larger F-stop to allow less light in through the iris
ensuring much of your shot remains in focus (large DOF). It's get's a tad confusing doesn't it and I'm
leaving out most the technical crap!
Lens Angle
The lens angle or focal length is the amount of information your camcorder can see. Most people have
heard of a wide-angle lens and the effect it will have on an image. They are ideal for large, panoramic
vistas or for small, confined spaces where you need to cram more stuff into your image without moving
your camcorder back. Depending on the angle at which your own camcorder lens is set, this will effect
the DOF. The larger and wider the angle, the larger the DOF. The narrower your lens angle, the
shallower DOF.
So why not just have a large DOF and be done with the focus knob?
You could do this and probably would do this if you were filming a sporting event or such. However,
for the true artist DOF will be far more important. Setting it correctly will allow you to ensure that your
subject is the centre of attention rather than some ghastly background or foreground object hogging the
limelight. Take these three pictures for example (which I stole from this site)

Shallow DOF
Notice the wine glass is nicely in focus but everything else
is blurry. The booze looks mighty tempting.

Shallow DOF
Still a relatively shallow Depth of Field but the wine bottle
is the focus of our attention. Both background and
foreground are out of focus.

Large DOF
For this shot, most objects are in focus (steadily going out
of focus towards the wall at the back). Glass, cork and
bottle are all in focus (although not razor sharp). This shot
probably explains DOF the best as you can imagine if you
moved any object around it would still be in focus whereas
if you did it in the above two shots, your subject will
quickly lose focus.

Picking A Setting
It really is down to you, the Director, Cinematographer, Director of Photography or whatever you want
to call yourself as to what DOF to have for each shot. Just remember, your subject should really be the
only thing in focus to avoid it getting lost with everything else in shot.
Hollywood movies have that dreamy-look about them and it is partly down to DOF. Take a look at any
mainstream movie, in any scene you will find nicely focused subjects and blurry everything else. This
way the audience never takes their eyes off what YOU want them to see. If you don't set the DOF
correctly, eyes may begin to wander around.
Please consider this guide as only an introduction to DOF with the basics that you need. If you need
more info, please see below but warning, these sites may blow your head off with info!
Additional Reading
Check out these sites for additional information on Depth Of Field
What Camcorder?
Matthew Cole Homepage

Snap Junky
http://www.stormforcepictures.com/theshoot-depthoffield.php