Kalyan atchyutani wrote:.

I have been reading about hyperfocal focussing for use in landscapephotography. What is the preferred focus point for shooting landscapephotography such that everything from foreground to background is infocus and sharp. I have been using autofocus for shooting landscapepictures with my rebel xti and tamron 17-50, I think it sets thefocus point to infinity since I aim at the farthest point..

In that case, how happy are you with the results that AF has been giving you at infinity? A lot can depend on the lens focal length and the subject itself. Often, especially with shorter focal lengths, infinity will yield the most pleasing result overall..

Sometimes a hyperfocal technique might be called for. Other times choosing to focus on a particular element within the scene might be a better bet. Infinity has it's advantages too..

Hyperfocal techniques are a tool that can sometimes be handy to have available, kind of like a polarizing filter. Relying on it as the sole method for focusing landscapes will often yield a lot of soft images, just as mounting a polarizer for every landscape will tend to yield some pretty flat and lifeless images..

Let the subject be your guide when deciding where to focus. If you do choose hyperfocusing, err on the side of caution (usually towards infinity). If you aren't certain, experiment a bit while at the scene and then compare the results carefully when you get back to a monitor to see which method you prefer..

Have fun!.

'Here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey!'.

Tom Younghttp://www.pbase.com/tyoung/..

Its a shame they dont still put the guide on the lens, means you have to carry a book to calculate, but it is the best way for lanscapes I thinkhttp://www.rafval.com..

Kalyan atchyutani wrote:.

I have been reading about hyperfocal focussing for use in landscapephotography. What is the preferred focus point for shooting landscapephotography such that everything from foreground to background is infocus and sharp. I have been using autofocus for shooting landscapepictures with my rebel xti and tamron 17-50, I think it sets thefocus point to infinity since I aim at the farthest point..

The thing with hyperfocal distance is that it's the focusing distance, for your particular settings, that will give you the longest DOF..

If it's most suitable or not is something you'll have to think about before every shot..

Here is a DOF-calculator where you, for your camera and different settings (focal length and aperture), can get the hyperfocal distance..

Http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.htmlhttp://sebastianfoto.se/..

Tyoung wrote:.

Relying on it as thesole method for focusing landscapes will often yield a lot of softimages.

I dont see how you would ever get soft images unless you wanted to.

Http://www.rafval.com..

In landscapes, the background is usually (a) near infinity and (b) visually very important. That means that it has the finest detail that you will want to resolve most clearly. Hyperfocal shooting puts the zone of critical focus somewhere in the near background, which means that both infinity and things close up will be slightly mushy, even if they're not obviously soft..

So, if you want an "everything sharp" picture, usually the best practice is to focus on the area with the finest detail that you want to resolve clearly, and then stop down to bring the bigger stuff within depth of field. Foreground objects, being bigger, will let you get away with more softness than background objects..

In other words, your "AF on infinity and stop down" technique is (usually) the best way to go. Of course, if your main object of interest is closer and has lots of fine detail, you might want to change your approach..

/Petterihttp://www.prime-junta.net/http://www.flickr.com/photos/primejunta/..

Petteri Sulonen wrote:.

In landscapes, the background is usually (a) near infinity and (b)visually very important. That means that it has the finest detailthat you will want to resolve most clearly. Hyperfocal shooting putsthe zone of critical focus somewhere in the near background, whichmeans that both infinity and things close up will be slightly mushy,even if they're not obviously soft..

So, if you want an "everything sharp" picture, usually the bestpractice is to focus on the area with the finest detail that you wantto resolve clearly, and then stop down to bring the bigger stuffwithin depth of field. Foreground objects, being bigger, will let youget away with more softness than background objects..

In other words, your "AF on infinity and stop down" technique is(usually) the best way to go. Of course, if your main object ofinterest is closer and has lots of fine detail, you might want tochange your approach..

/Petterihttp://www.prime-junta.net/http://www.flickr.com/photos/primejunta/.

I could be wrong but I thought the idea of hyperfocal focusing was that everything within the area would be sharp, and that area depends on the aperture you use, so if you use say f22 on a wide angle lens you can get an area from infinity to reasonably close to the camera sharp, it paid to be a little conservitive, but still the best way of doing landscapes I thinkhttp://www.rafval.com..

RafVal wrote:.

I could be wrong but I thought the idea of hyperfocal focusing wasthat everything within the area would be sharp, and that area dependson the aperture you use, so if you use say f22 on a wide angle lensyou can get an area from infinity to reasonably close to the camerasharp, it paid to be a little conservitive, but still the best wayof doing landscapes I think.

Well, of course only one plane of focus will actually be "sharp", with the remaining areas in front of or behind that plane (hopefully) remaining acceptably sharp, though never quite as sharp as the actual plane of focus..

How acceptable this level of unsharpness will be can depend a lot on the subject itself, the lens and focal length, size of the image sensor, degree of enlargement, etc..

Focussing by the numbers made pretty good sense at a time when the resolving power of our lenses and the films used at the time were fairly weak to begin with. It can still make sense today, at least some of the time, but with all of the pixel peeping going on now days, it can pay to spend a little less time fiddling around with the calculators and more time concentrating on the subject itself..

Considering your example of shooting with a wide angle lens, depending on how wide it actually is, the infinity point might only be a few short meters out. Focusing a landscape short of that point might extend the near DoF by a slight degree, but at the expense of slightly degrading the sharpness of nearly everything else in the scene. The decision as to whether or not that would be worthwhile is dependent on your own approach and is something that should be carefully considered (or at least experimented with) rather than simply being handed over to the indifference of a calculator..

Yet another complicating factor in the equation is diffraction. Stopping that lens down to f/22 will help to extend the acceptable DoF, but will also increase the diffraction of light passing through the aperture, possibly negating the DoF benefits by reducing detail across the entire image, including that of the actual plane of focus. This effect will be especially noticeable on enlarged images..

Once again, a lot of different factors come in to play in deciding how far a lens should actually be stopped down, how much loss of detail through diffraction might be acceptable with regards to maintaining some DoF benefits, etc..

As with everything else in photography, the final results all boil down to which compromises you've chosen to make. Hyperfocality is one of many different forms of compromise. There are times you might want to include it, and other times when it would be best not to..

'Here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey!'.

Tom Younghttp://www.pbase.com/tyoung/..

RafVal wrote:.

[snip].

I could be wrong but I thought the idea of hyperfocal focusing wasthat everything within the area would be sharp, and that area dependson the aperture you use, so if you use say f22 on a wide angle lensyou can get an area from infinity to reasonably close to the camerasharp, it paid to be a little conservitive, but still the best wayof doing landscapes I think.

Problem is, "sharp" is a matter of opinion. In actual fact, only a single plane will ever be exactly in focus. As you go further away from it, things get progressively softer. At some point, you decide that they're soft enough to count as out of focus, and decide that that's where your depth of field ends. However, it's still softer than it could be, and sometimes especially in landscapes soft enough to matter, such as with fine, near-infinity detail..

Second, stopping down increases diffraction which makes your picture softer overall. When shooting with slow 35 mm film, f/22 is well past this "diffraction limit" you would get a visibly sharper picture at f/16, sharper still at f/11, and with some lenses and some films, even sharper at f/8. So the technique you describe stop down to f/22 and focus at three meters will guarantee that nothing in your picture will be really soft, but the trade-off is that nothing will be as sharp as it could be either..

/Petterihttp://www.prime-junta.net/http://www.flickr.com/photos/primejunta/..

Thanks for the link. Melissa.

Image control:Zoom outZoom 100%Zoom inExpand AllOpen in new window.

Http://www.flickr.com/photos/melissa926http://picasaweb.google.com/michiganmelissa..

Hello,.

I am a beginner in digital photography! I just got my Canon XTI a few months ago. I love landscape photography and now am looking to buy the perfect lens for landscapes. I would love to know eveyone's opinion on which lens is the best. Also the best canon lens for portraits as well..

ThanksShawna..

The stock answer is "whatever's on the camera.".

A slightly more serious answer would be... your kit lens, for now. Thing is, there's a huge variety of ways to shoot portraits and landscapes, and a huge variety of lenses to let you do so. There really isn't any "the" best..

However, people often use wide-angle lenses for landscapes and short telephoto lenses for portraits. Your kit lens will do both, at each end of it's zoom range. Experiment with it. After a few months, you'll know more about how *you* take landscapes and portraits, and you may find out that the kit lens limits your photography in some way. That's when you'll know what to buy next something wider, longer, brighter, sharper, or something altogether different..

/Petterihttp://www.prime-junta.net/http://www.flickr.com/photos/primejunta/..

The real problem with hyperfocal is that the "acceptable sharpness" definition isn't anywhere near "acceptable" most of the time, especially in our current era of pixel-peeping..

Use distances for 2-3 stops opened up from what you're actually shootinguse f5.6 distances and shoot at f11, for instance. This way instead of just barely acceptable, things at the boundaries are very nearly as sharp as the plane of focus..

The idea that nothing is as sharp as the plane of focus is a little misleading. For things that are much closer to the plane of focus than they are to the traditional DOF limit, the defocus-limited resolution is higher than the lens and/or sensor limits on resolution, so the losses are very small..

Another way of approaching thisfar, far easier on manual-focus lenses with good DOF scalesis to determine what the near and far distances you need are, find a focus point that leaves them defocused a similar amount, then stop down at least a couple of stops from what traditional DOF says is necessary to get both points in focus..

This works well enough to be worth getting an adapter and some manual glass. I bought my Leica 19/2.8 for the sharpnessand it is unholy sharpbut I fear I love it a lot more for it's great distance/DOF scales. I don't think I've focused it through the finder at all since the first week or two I owned it..

Don't be too afraid of stopping downyeah, yeah, going past diffraction-limited degrades your image, but sometimes not as much as having something important hanging too close to the edge of "acceptable sharpness"..

If you're on a tripodand for deep DOF landscape you really should be anywayconsider combining exposures. Shoot a vaguely-near-infinity frame and maybe a 3ft. frame, then combine them in Photoshop. Just be aware that almost all lenseseven primeschange magnification as they focus, the close shot will need to be scaled to 99% or so to match up to the infinity shot. Be sure to leave generous DOF overlap, nothing looks more goofily fake than a sharp foreground and background with a soft middle distance...