Hyperfocal Distance Question

[WhoFlungPoo]

New to photography and had a question about hyperlocal distance and how to actually focus at this distance. For example, if my focal distance is 10 ft, do I just turn the focus ring on my lens to the 10ft mark? Is that "focusing" at 10ft?

from photopill

 

[Derrel]

If you align the yellow 10 foot mark with that white index, that would indeed be "focusing at 10 feet."

 

[WhoFlungPoo]

Thanks Derrel!

 

[Brand000n]

Looks like you already got your answer, just thought I’d add that focusing at a lens’ hyperfocal distance is the bees knees because you can set it and know that whatever you have in your frame will be in focus at and past that distance.

I use it all the time for street photography. It’s one less thing to think about so you can focus on your framing

 

[rosh4u]

Very well questioned as well as answered. I liked it

 

[ac12]

The problem today is, that the lenses do not have the DoF scale on the lens.
So you need a separate chart or app to figure it out.
1 step forward, 1 step back.

 

[TCampbell]

Keep in mind that the ‘hyper-focal’ distance depends on the image size (film or sensor size), as well as the lens focal length AND the focal-ratio you choose. Change any of those things and you’ll get a different value.

In other words, it wont always be 10’. (It would only be true with a 14mm lens on an APS-C camera at about f/3.5)

A 14mm lens on any DSLR with an APS-C sensor ... EVEN at f/2.8 has a hyper-focal distance of about 12 ft. That would create acceptably sharp focus from 6 ft out to infinity.

But that’s at f/2.8 (wide-open for that lens). Stopped down to something like... f/8 then the hyper-focal distance becomes 4.28 ft and everything from 2.1 ft to infinity is focused.

That’s the nature of very short focal length lenses... they have extremely broad depth of field even at low focal ratios.

It’s called the “hyper-focal distance” when it’s the focused distance that maximizes the depth of field for that camera+ lens + focal ratio combination.

Older lenses had a scale on them which made this extremely easy to find. Today far fewer lenses include a suitable scale on the lens barrel. But you can get a smartphone app that will calculate it for you.

Here’s a post where this was recently discussed and in response #14 for the thread, I uploaded some images of my old film camera and how to use it.

Depth of Field ~ distances and zoom lenses

 

[PJcam]

There are some very knowledgeable guys on this forum, always happy and willing to help.

As for me, I am at the bottom of the learning ladder so I love to see these questions and read all the replies.

I just been reading about this myself, I found a great App you may like to download, it is easy to use, easy to understand and the graphic details are great (especially when you see the settings you input give you max DoF. But there is a lot more with this App, every link has a detailed explanation so you can follow it through from setting up to shooting and understand the terminology and positions at the same time. The App I downloaded for Android is called 'HyperFocal Pro'