I have mentioned before that the iPhone has essentially unlimited depth of field. Practically speaking, under most circumstances, this is true. But not always. The photograph above has had a bit of colour correction done, but other than that, nothing. You can produce out of focus areas, but bear in mind that the flowers and grass in the foreground are about an inch from the camera. Not the most versatile of cameras, but it just goes to show – don’t take generalities as absolutes.
A great deal is said about depth of field, incidentally, often by people who know est to nothing about it. I do not pretend to. I have a pretty good idea how it works in practical situations, and that’s good enough for me (and, unless you’re a scientist whose interests are something other than the visual, it should be good enough for pretty much anyone). You would be astonished how people get themselves tied up into knots about it, though. They’ll tell you that a m4/3 camera is inherently not as good a full frame camera because “it doesn’t have as shallow a depth of field.” Well, that is, and it isn’t true. The fact is, even the smallest sensors (and you don’t get much smaller that the iPhone’s) can be forced to appear to have a very shallow DoF. And I suspect that a number of people have no idea at all about the practicalities of the issue.
Like so many things on the internet, it’s just not worth getting worked up about. Feel free to flame in the comments…