I was listening to a 7 photography questions podcast the other day -- number 13, with Jennifer Wu. She corrected a few of the misunderstandings I had regarding landscape photography. Specifically she addressed what aperture she uses to get a great landscape shot. I always assumed your lens never had a better excuse to stop all the way down and make the dust on your sensor nice and sharp than it does when you are shooting a landscape. Jennifer states that she typically uses f8, f11, and f16 because her Canon lenses produce sharper images that way even if the depth of field isn't as wide as f22.
That brought up another related topic... how to establish your hyperfocal distance. She recommends checking out the tools at DOF Master. They have programs to help you print charts for hyperfocal distances. I will certainly be trying out her suggestions, as I have found my landscapes are not quite as sharp as I'd like even when I'm using my tripod, mirror lock-up, and the whole works.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
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In the good old days, lenses often had aperture numbers marked on them, plus the infinity symbol (like a figure 8 on its side) at either side of the focus mark. To make sure that you got the best depth of field all you had to do was stop down to a smallish aperture, and then focus on infinity. You them MOVED the infinity mark to the f-stop marking (which took the focus point backwards), to correspond with the f-stop you had set in the camera. This instantly increased foreground focus - the focusing distance increased - while ensuring that the background was still sharp (you can't focus past infinity). This was called finding "hyperfocal distance". These marking are sadly lacking in modern lenses (it costs money to put them on). But, it taught me a good way to find the Hyperfocal Distance. Focus on infinity and then go back a bit - at a smallish aperture (f11 - f16)
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