# Shallow depth of field

Camera / Focus and depth / Depth of field. Checked 2026-10-13.

Isolates the subject from a soft background; attention goes exactly where you want.

- Use when: Portraits, product hero shots, interviews.
- Phrase: shallow depth of field, her eyes sharp, the café behind her a soft blur of shapes and lights
- Page: https://directorchair.ai/focus/shallow-focus
- JSON: https://directorchair.ai/api/focus/shallow-focus.json

## Watch out

- For stills, practitioners write a full capture line with an aperture (35mm, f/1.8); a 2025 study for Midjourney found f-stops ignored and plain words (blurred background) working. Plain words first, the number as support. (practitioner; Dan Kieft (1 Sep 2026) via Director Chair field notes on image prompting; Midjourney mapping in our own notes (2025, to audit))

## Prompts

### Nano Banana Pro

```
[your subject] in [your setting].
Capture: Employ a wide aperture of f/1.8 to create a shallow depth of field, rendering the background in soft, creamy bokeh while keeping the subject razor-sharp
```

### Nano Banana 2

```
[your subject] in [your setting].
Capture: Employ a wide aperture of f/1.8 to create a shallow depth of field, rendering the background in soft, creamy bokeh while keeping the subject razor-sharp
```

### GPT Image 2.5

```
A photograph of [your subject] in [your setting].
Details: shallow depth of field, the subject's eyes sharp, the café behind the subject a soft blur of shapes and lights
Exclusions: no extra text, no watermark, no logo.
```

### Seedream 5

```
[your subject] in [your setting].
Capture: shallow depth of field, the subject's eyes sharp, the café behind the subject a soft blur of shapes and lights
```

### Seedance 2.5

```
Scene: [your subject] in [your setting].
Shot 1 (0:00 to 0:05): one continuous shot
Optics and camera: Shallow depth of field, the subject's eyes sharp, the café behind the subject a soft blur of shapes and lights.
```

### Seedance 2.0

```
Scene: [your subject] in [your setting].
Shot 1: one continuous shot
Optics and camera: Shallow depth of field, the subject's eyes sharp, the café behind the subject a soft blur of shapes and lights.
```

### Kling 3.0

```
[your subject]. The scene is [your setting]. Shallow depth of field, the subject's eyes sharp, the café behind the subject a soft blur of shapes and lights.
```

### Veo 3.1

```
Shallow depth of field, the subject's eyes sharp, the café behind the subject a soft blur of shapes and lights. [your subject] in [your setting]. Framing and subject stay as in the start image.
```

## Goes well with

- Deep focus: https://directorchair.ai/focus/deep-focus
- Bokeh: https://directorchair.ai/focus/bokeh
- Portrait (85mm): https://directorchair.ai/lens/portrait-lens

## Source

The first Director Chair spec, own words

Text CC BY 4.0, Director Chair (directorchair.ai). Reference clips and their card texts belong to their makers.