Haha love it. I always enjoy seeing black and white photos. The background seems mismatched for the mouse trap but it's better than it being on a boring carpet. 9/10.
When looking for shallow depth of field, what you basically need is big entrance pupil diameters, close distances between camera and subject and a far away background. The bigger the diameter of the smallest glass element in a lens, the shallower the DoF. Since the f-number is directly dependant on the relation between focal length and etrance pupil diameter you have to look for "fast" lenses with big apertures (smaller numbers). The closer your subject is to your camera and the farther the background is away the stronger the blur.
Sensor sizes
In theory this can be acchieved with any camera no matter the sensor size. In reality you're limited by the available lenses. The difference in sensor sizes means that you have to use different focal lengths on differently sized sensors to acchieve the same field of view. A 50mm lens on a "full frame" sensor is usually referred to as a standard lens that gets sort of close to human vision (that's the theory, in fact it is sort of narrower than that; the lens has a field of view of ~47°). On an APS-C camera a 50mm lens has a narrower field of view and on a 6x4,5 cm medium format camera, those 50mm is a moderate wide angle lens with a wider field of view. The so called crop factor can be used to quickly calculate the equivalent field of view on a certain sensor size. APS-C for example has a crop factor of 1,5-1,6 (depending on the manufacturer). So in order to find the equivalent focal length of a full frame lens on an APS-C camera you divide the full frame focal length by the crop factor.
Classic portrait focal lengths
What does that mean? You usually use certain field of views for different applications. Portraits for example are most of the time being shot with focal lengths of around 80mm - 135mm on full frame cameras (so a field of view of ~28°-18°) on APS-C cameras you'll end up with something around 50mm - 85/90mm.
Why those focal lengths?
Why those focal lengths? There is one major and one minor reason.
Perspective
The major reason is the perspective. A lot of people wrongfully say that longer focal lengths compress images and wider ones are pulling images apart (visual depth wise). This is not true. When taking pictures of the same subject at the same distance with different focal lengths from the same point, you will end up (of course) with pictures that show your subject at different sizes. If you now cut out the image of the wider shot to get the same field of view of the longer shot the visual depth or "compression" will be identical. The reason for "compression" is your distance to the subject. The close you go the more perspective will be distorted. The wider the field of view the stronger this effect appears to be but on the longer lens you're only "cutting away" the more severly distorted parts. At those 80mm - 135mm on FF you have a good compromise of distance to your subject, less distortion and the right field of view. It's usually seen as flattering.
Apertures and what they mean
The minor reason is the fact that longer lenses have (often) glass elements with larger diameters which results in shallower depth of field. Let's compare two lenses: 35mm f/2 and 90mm f/2. Both lenses have the same maximum aperture but they are of severly differnt sizes and will deliver noticeably different depth of field. As mentioned above, the maximum aperture is the relation between focal length and entrance pupil diameter. For the 35mm f/2 this means 2 = 35mm / d and for the 90mm f/2 this means 2 = 90mm / d. The entrance pupil of the 35mm f/2 lens measures 17.5mm in diameter whereas the 90mm f/2 offers 45mm in diameter.
Crop factor and what it applies to
This relationship means you have to apply the crop factor not only the the focal length but also to the maximum aperture of a lens in order to get the equivalent field of view and depth of field on a different format.
If you want to ge the same field of view and depth of field of a 90mm f/2 lens on APS-C (crop 1.5) you'll need a 90mm / 1.5 = 60mm lens with a maximum aperture of 2 / 1.5 = 1.34. So you need a 60mm f/1.34 lens. Field of view and depth of field will be basically identical.
This also means that the smaller your sensor and therefore the larger the crop factor the faster a lens has to be in order to acchieve the same depth of field compared to FF. At some point those lenses just don't exist or if they do they're prohibitively expensive.
(Very) Long story short
You can acchieve shallow depth of field with every camera. The smaller the sensor the faster the lens needs to be in order to acchieve shallow depth of field.
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