Landscape, where to set autofucs

[GregoryJack]

Hello

This is my first post here and it has been causing me a bit of confusion recently. I have a sony nex 6 and when I started out I use to point and shoot at a high aperture and hope for the best. I've now got some more experience and recently bought the Sony 18-105 F/4 OSS lens. Ignoring full frame crop factor, at the lowest end the lens is reasonably wide, but what I don't understand is where should I set my focus point for landscape photos? I have the option of centre, flexible spot or multi? The only reason I've got confused about this is I have recently read a lot of stuff on hyperfocal distance which all refers to manual focus lenses where you can physically set the distance you want the lens to focus at. For example, an article about the Rokinon 12mm f/2 says that at f/8 and the following settings (below photo) everything from 3foot to infinity is in focus. Essentially how can I simulate these settings using an autofocus lens?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jaomul]

It's usually ok to set focus 1/3rd into the scenery. So if your doing a landscape put the focus point 1/3rd from bottom of viewfinder

 

[weepete]

Some autofocus lenses have DoF markings on them to do this, however many don't. As jomul says you can focus 1/3rd of the way into a scene to ballpark it. I quite often do that, and with my camera on a tripod turn the lens to manual focus and switch to live view ussing the zoom feature in live view to check the front to back focus. A lot of cameras also have a DoF preview button that can be used to check focus as well.

 

[fmw]

The AF mode doesn't matter. Just put it on whatever you want to be in sharpest focus and shoot.

 

[Designer]

..where should I set my focus point for landscape photos?

Your first priority should be to set your focus point on your main area of interest, wherever it is in the frame. If there is no particular point of interest (why not?) then set your focus area on something that is approximately 1/3 of the total distance into the shot. You might assume that the depth of field is evenly divided front-to-back from the point of focus, but due to the way lenses render the DOF, it's more like 1/3 and 2/3 of the total DOF with a much deeper area of acceptable focus behind your point of focus and a somewhat lesser distance in front (back toward the lens).

But you should have an interesting point of focus anyway, so do that.