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The Deep Landscape
Many people see the landscape as something that by its nature is off in the distance. When they try to photograph it, they put the horizon in the middle of the frame and zoom back to their shortest focal length to “fit it all in”. Sadly, this approach is almost guaranteed to produce a dull result. However, you can create a much more interesting and punchy picture by employing a technique well known to experienced landscape photographers in which hyperfocal distance is used to precisely control the zone of focus.
THE CHALLENGE Create a dynamic landscape image by placing an interesting object or appropriate scenic detail in the immediate foreground of your picture while at the same time maintaining sharpness out to infinity. To do this, you will control your depth of field by using the hyperfocal distance technique.
TALKING TECHNIQUE For any combination of lens focal length, aperture setting and camera sensor size, there is a particular point of optimal focus. Called the hyperfocal distance, everything from half this value out to infinity will be in focus. Let’s say you have a DX format DSLR and for your composition you want to use the lens at its 18mm setting. If you select an aperture of f/11, the hyperfocal distance will be 1.4 metres and the zone in focus will extend from half that distance (ie 0.7 metres) out to infinity. By ensuring that your important foreground detail is no closer than 0.7 metres, you can be certain that your photograph will be sharp from up close to infinity.
Specialist landscape photographers will often carry a table that tells them exactly what the hyperfocal distance is for any given combination of focal length and aperture. You’ll find several links below right to free online resources for easily creating such a table for your particular lens focal length and sensor size. If you don’t have a hyperfocal calculation table, there is a rough rule of thumb when shooting landscapes wherein you manually focus on a point roughly a third the way into the scene (your estimated hyperfocal distance) and then re-frame the shot to place your important foreground element about half way between you and the hyperfocal point.
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