Originally Posted by pompousjohn

I am starting to try to teach myself photography, and I have a pretty decent camera and a collection of lenses, it's a Sony a77ii.

One thing I am struggling with is the f settings, I generally find that most of the pictures I want to take end up with too much depth of field, so only a narrow focal point is in focus while the foreground and background are blurred. like if one person is standing behind another person I can only bring one of them into focus at a time.

I understand that by adjusting the f-stop(?) I can increase the focal range but when indoors this dramatically reduces the light (exposure?) and sometimes I can crank the iso up to make it acceptable but even so I still can't seem to figure that part out - even at the highest settings I often find the focal range is too narrow for what I want.

When I use a cheap camera like the one on my phone or a webcam I don't get that issue at all, so it doesn't seem like I need more expensive gear, maybe the direct opposite - but there must be something I am missing.

Any ideas?