Nailing focus from front to back in landscape photography is so important. In this video I share some simple tips and photo examples to ensure you get it right in camera every time.
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#photography #focus #tutorial
Great vid. Very helpful. And beatiful pictures
Wowww…..you make it so complicated. God save me! Hiperfocal distance bla bla bla. All you need is to know the best aperture of your lens and then with liveview just focus in three parts of the image(scene).Take your shots, align them and enjoy photogrphy!!!!
So if you don't have any elements in the foreground and you focus near infinity, changing the aperture won't do anything other than give more light? Should you In this case always shoot at a wide aperture to lower the iso?
Nice video. I've occasionally had problems when shooting low to get items in the foreground like rocks in focus without having to focus stack. I still get confused with hyperfocal distance and Dof near limit and Dof far limit. I get that half the hyperfocal distance to infinity should be in focus so what importance does the Dof near distance have?
Thanks Nigel, that was very helpful.
How can I calculate the distance…? Pls help… I'm a novice…Still researching about the ways to take good photos…How can I focus on the exact distance…Do I need to guess it…?
Did you watch the video where Thomas H. tried various methods? Ended up preferring infinity.
Great Video. Lots of helpful info. Thanks!
the painting at the beginning is nice! do you mix your own paint?
This was hard to listen to. Keep it concise next time
Excellent video; concisely explained what was something of a mystery to me.
Nice
Pardon my ignorance but I just wanna ask, is this also applicable to the camera that Im using right now which is a Fujifilm XA3 with a Fujinon 23mm f2 kit lens? Im just starting in photography so please bear with me. Thank you.
Nigel – Excellent, very informative – thankyou so much for that
Just bought a D850 & 24-70 f2.8 ED VR so now I really need to up my game and landscape is one genre I love and want to nail Will try the 2 x Hyperfocal but its good to experiment and try varying ideasInteresting that you don't mention focus shifting / stacking which I just cant quite seem to get so will stick with this method
The soft foreground with the lighthouse is amazing. Great tip!
Great video!!! YouTube decided to recommend this video and Im so happy!! Subbed
Thank you for your video! I will apply this next time I am out and about. I am just an amateur but these tips will hopefully help on my next outing with nice outdoors 😀 Thanks again 😀
If you're only looking for DOF then on Android there is an app called HyperFocal Pro, it's free. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.zendroid.hyperfocal&hl=en Quite intuitive as well 😀
Which lrens do u use for landscape sir
Nigel, how important is lens calibration ??
Nigel, many thanks for all the great stuff you put up.
Just one word on diffraction. This has nothing to do with your camera, setup or aperture. It is a characteristic of light waves (actually any waves with a short wave length), when they pass over an object obstructing their path (in other words and relevant in photography, when the light waves hit the edge of the aperture in the lense).
Therefore, diffraction happens at any setting of the aperture–but it becomes noticeable in a photograph only at smaller aperture settings (from 16, sometimes from 11 on), because there aren't enough "unbent" light waves to overpower those going astray (ok, this is a very simplified explanation …).
Thanks again for all the work and effort you put into your tutorials, Michael
Fantastic video Nigel and I used this information to start a discussion at our photography club on Tuesday night, with the majority of members stating they just focus on something a third into the frame. But not really being able to explain the technical reason for doing so. I wanted to ask you something based on an image I intend capturing in the next few weeks, which is the Wanaka Tree shot in New Zealand. If I want to stand approx 10 metres from the tree and have the tree and the mountains in sharp focus. Do I still focus on infinity?
I think the most improtant porblem is…how would you excatly focus at 3.26m in the field?…ok you only can estimate the distance and this is my biggest problem with the useag of the HFD.
There is the circle of confusion to get the hyperfocal distanz. And the circle of confusion ist about 0.02 mm…and this point in my opinin does not allow to estimate the HFD in the field…ok…if it is 3.5 m oder 3.8 m it does not matter, but the differenz is 0.3 m and than people discuss if the cirlce of confusion is 0.015mm or 0.03mm…you know what i mean?
In 09:25 how did you shoot into the sun without losing all of the details in the shadows? Not sure what I'm doing wrong but I feel like I lose all of my shadow detail when I do the same, regardless of LR adjustments. Did you use a lens filter?
Are you located in SF?
I'm confused. You talk about the importance of the hyper focal distance and doubling and to focus at these points for maximum sharpness. Yet your most sharp photos (front to back) you said you focused on infinity??
This is without a doubt one of the best videos I've watched about focusing. Thank you so much Nigel! Love your explanations!
Nigel, You mentioned the hyperfocal distance a lot in the video but you didn't mention that most higher quality lenses have a DOF scale on the barrel. Was that an oversight or did you not consider that accurate enough? I would imagine that it would be accurate as the focus point is determined by the size of the circles of confusion which are dependent on the aperture, a function of the lens and not the camera. I know this is a bit after the fact but I'd be fascinated to find out what you think.
What I always love about your channel is that you have such wonderful example images!
Nice job. Found your comments very helpful. Thanks
Very useful, but am a bit confused. Is it safe to summarize that if I do not care about foreground 10ft from where my tripod is, then its safe to just focus on infinity? And if I need the sharp focus from 3 ft to infinity then I should focus on 2x hyperfocal length ?
super helpful
Enjoying your video and your discussion on hyperfocal distance/point. Which I have not heard for years since the days I was shooting films. When I was a child I used to read whatever was available on photography and even as I got older they were very few people that were into it it is much as I was at the time. I believe there was a club or organization called ‘F8’Where you could read articles on photography and concepts are theory on depth of field ,white balance,,films speed, exposure and film developed. That conversation went out the window with digital photography. Which made this video so refreshing.
A fine presentation, backed up by a seriously good eye for landscape – I'm subscribing.
Correct me if I am wrong please. The f number chosen as safely below diffraction will vary with the focal length, correct? This would be because diffraction is strictly related to the wavelength and the real physical size of the aperture, which changes according to focal length, as it is a ratio. Therefore f10 for a 20mm would be a hole of physical diameter 2mm, but for a 200mm it would be a hole of physical diameter 20mm. I mention this as some people may not grasp that an f number is a ratio, never mind the physics being universal, ie unrelated to cameras per se. Light diffracts around edges, even if they are not a hole!
Historical aside from the days of film: This helps clarify the famous "Group f.64" of American Southwest photographers (A.Adams, E.Weston et al) whose work was an emphasis of high detail realism, and was done on 8×10 inch film at of course – f.64! How would you get best detail at f.64 one might wonder. Well a "normal" perspective lens has about the length of the format diagonal, so would be 13 inches or about 330mm for 8×10 film. Therefore the ratio f.64 (very diffractive in 35mm full frame) on the 330mm yields about 5.5mm in aperture for the 8×10, viola no diffraction! Yeah I'm old it's a bummer but I know shit. ;(
Hello Nigel! Attending class at Nigel's School of Light is always fascinating and ever so useful. Thanks for sharing, this has reminded me of things I once used often (years ago with film when all good lenses showed hyperlocal on the barrel) and now I am going to go DL Photopills and get to know my lenses better. Thanks for sharing! Take care and cheers from BC.
Excellent video, as always. Have you tried 'double distance focussing'? Find the nearest point you want sharp and then double that distance for your focus point. I heard of it from Ross Hodinott.
I shoot with the Fuji X-T3 that has a DOF scale. I haven’t critically examined how well that scale works. Anyone chime in?