Noob Question about Emitters and DOF

[Sereby]

Greetings! I'm new to the community.

 

I was doing a test render with Maxwell Render 2 to try it out and I'm a little confused about my result. I have a simple scene setup with some spheres (default material applied) lined up in a row. I have the camera f-stop fairly low, and there's shallow DOF. Next to each sphere is a much smaller sphere which has an emitter material applied. Also, the entire scene is lit using a skydome.

 

In the render, the larger spheres with the default material are affected by DOF as I would expect. However, the smaller spheres, which are essentially the emitters in the scene, are not affected by DOF - unless I set their intensity to 0. Then, they appear completely black, but go in and out of focus just like their larger counterparts.

 

So, the emitter objects are always in perfect focus no matter where they are placed within the scene, or what the camera settings are. Is this expected behavior?

 

I appreciate any help. Thanks!