What f/stop do you normally use for portrait and landscape?

tecboy

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For me, I use f/5.6 for portrait. I think this is enough, and I might go higher about f/8. For Landscape, I use f/14, f/18 ,or to the max at f/22.
 
I'm typically at 5.6-6.3 for a single subject. 8-11 for multiple.

11-16 for landscape.
 
There's just no good way to answer that, it's like asking, "what clothes do you wear when you go outside?". Each scene will require different apertures
 
somewhere between f/2 and f/22 usually.

In all seriousness, completely depends on what I'm going for, what the conditions are, what lens I have, what the angle of view is, etc.

standard studio portrait with strobes, white seamless, shooting distance of 10 feet shot at 90mm? Probably using f/8 there 99% of the time. But an outdoor environmental portrait, shot from 50 feet away with a 200mm? Probably f/2.8 then.

Landscape, shot on a tripod with lots of fore, mid and background that all needs to be relatively in focus, nothing moving? f/22 probably. If no foreground needs to be in focus, then f/11 to avoid diffraction. If it's handheld, sun is setting, no foreground needed, mountains are whatever are relatively flat, probably f/4.

Every shot is it's own thing.
 
There's just no good way to answer that, it's like asking, "what clothes do you wear when you go outside?". Each scene will require different apertures

I'm trying to get the sharpest images possible for portrait. I get sharp focus on the nose area and soft at eyes or ears. Sometimes, vice versa.
 
For me, I use f/5.6 for portrait. I think this is enough, and I might go higher about f/8. For Landscape, I use f/14, f/18 ,or to the max at f/22.
Totally depends upon what I'm trying to achieve. I shoot some portraits at f2.0 where I might focus on a lock of hair or eyelashes but usually it will be more like f2.8 or 3.5. For landscapes, usually it's pretty long DoF so I might max out. Or I might focus on one specific element of nature (like a tree) and go for a narrow DoF. But it's going to vary with the type of picture I'm trying to create, the lens I'm using, and the light available.
 
There's just no good way to answer that, it's like asking, "what clothes do you wear when you go outside?". Each scene will require different apertures

I'm trying to get the sharpest images possible for portrait. I get sharp focus on the nose area and soft at eyes or ears. Sometimes, vice versa.
one thing to be aware of, if you pixel peep, is that depth of field is something of a misnomer. There will always be a plane of sharpest focus, that's just how optics work. More depth of field doesn't mean you have a given area of equally sharp focus, it means that the fade from sharp to not in focus is more gradual, so there is a wider band of "acceptably sharp." But if you pixel peep, there will always be a difference between the nose and eyes in sharpness, assuming you have a lens that is sharp enough to not obfuscate this difference.
 
There's just no good way to answer that, it's like asking, "what clothes do you wear when you go outside?". Each scene will require different apertures

I'm trying to get the sharpest images possible for portrait. I get sharp focus on the nose area and soft at eyes or ears. Sometimes, vice versa.
one thing to be aware of, if you pixel peep, is that depth of field is something of a misnomer. There will always be a plane of sharpest focus, that's just how optics work. More depth of field doesn't mean you have a given area of equally sharp focus, it means that the fade from sharp to not in focus is more gradual, so there is a wider band of "acceptably sharp." But if you pixel peep, there will always be a difference between the nose and eyes in sharpness, assuming you have a lens that is sharp enough to not obfuscate this difference.

Excellent point, which is why I focus stack so often
 
There's just no good way to answer that, it's like asking, "what clothes do you wear when you go outside?". Each scene will require different apertures

I'm trying to get the sharpest images possible for portrait. I get sharp focus on the nose area and soft at eyes or ears. Sometimes, vice versa.
one thing to be aware of, if you pixel peep, is that depth of field is something of a misnomer. There will always be a plane of sharpest focus, that's just how optics work. More depth of field doesn't mean you have a given area of equally sharp focus, it means that the fade from sharp to not in focus is more gradual, so there is a wider band of "acceptably sharp." But if you pixel peep, there will always be a difference between the nose and eyes in sharpness, assuming you have a lens that is sharp enough to not obfuscate this difference.

Excellent point, which is why I focus stack so often
You FS portraits?
CalvinBlink2.gif
 
There's just no good way to answer that, it's like asking, "what clothes do you wear when you go outside?". Each scene will require different apertures

I'm trying to get the sharpest images possible for portrait. I get sharp focus on the nose area and soft at eyes or ears. Sometimes, vice versa.
one thing to be aware of, if you pixel peep, is that depth of field is something of a misnomer. There will always be a plane of sharpest focus, that's just how optics work. More depth of field doesn't mean you have a given area of equally sharp focus, it means that the fade from sharp to not in focus is more gradual, so there is a wider band of "acceptably sharp." But if you pixel peep, there will always be a difference between the nose and eyes in sharpness, assuming you have a lens that is sharp enough to not obfuscate this difference.

Excellent point, which is why I focus stack so often
You FS portraits?
CalvinBlink2.gif

Ha good call, no I do not. I really don't shoot portraits at all. I should have clarified, I focus stack most of my landscape shots.
 
2.0 - 5.6 for people . Step back and crop later if need be ...shoot for focus on leading eye . All my portraits don't necessarily need to be uber sharp . Landscape I'd imagine around 8 to 16 . No real formula . Kinda depends what you are after .
 
If you want really sharply focused landscape shots, because of the way DoF works, unless you are focusing fairly close to the camera there is little point in using an lens aperture smaller than about f/8 for a landscape shot.

Using a 18 mm focal length, a 1.6x crop image sensor, using f/8, and a point of focus distance just 8 feet in front of the camera the near DoF limit is 3.75 feet from the focal plane and the far DoF limit is infinity.
Using 18 mm, f/5.6, and a PoF 10 feet from the camera, the far limit of the DoF is also at infinity.
As the PoF distance is increased while staying at f/8, the only thing that changes is the near DoF limit gets further from the camera.
Using a smaller lens aperture may hurt focus sharpness due to diffraction.
 
There's just no good way to answer that, it's like asking, "what clothes do you wear when you go outside?". Each scene will require different apertures
What, wait...........your supposed to wear clothes when you go outside???? Oh, I bet if I did that when mowing the lawn the neighbors would be happier. Especially when I'm bending over working in the front flower bed. :biggrin-93:
 
fjrabon said:
somewhere between f/2 and f/22 usually... SNIP>

Every shot is it's own thing.

That's a good range, somewhere between f/2 and f/22.

I break it down mostly based on lighting level and group size; a single person affords the most freedom, since the depth of field needed for a single person is not as much as is needed for say, a group of 10 people. Still...I'm NOT a fan of one eye-in, the other eye out shallow DOF, so I normally think in terms of using an aperture that will give a little bit of cushion, a little bit of a safety margin, so the subject can move a bit, or I can mash on the shutter release button and if the focus is not dead-on, the shot will not be a junker.

With electronic flash, I usually like to use f/7.1 or f/8 much of the time.

Landscapes...f/8, f/9.5, f/10, f/11 mostly. What becomes a real PITA for me with landscapes is that at small apertures, sensor dust becomes deep, dark, black specs, which for me, need cloning out.
 

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