Where To Focus For Clear Landscape Photos

[john.margetts]

<snip> When I zoom in, I feel like the picture is pixelated/noisy.<snip>

So, don't zoom in! ANY camera, using ANY lens, with ANY technique, will produce a lousy picture when zoomed in. Just don't do it. You can achieve nothing by zooming in.

If you want to know how sharp your picture is, print it on paper at A3 size and look at it at arm's length. Any lack of sharpness (or any other defect!) that you cannot see is of no importance.

 

[kalgra]

Thank you all for the response. I did some shooting after reading everyones replies and watching a few videos on youtube on hyperlocal distance and how to actually set that on my lens. Below are two pictures taken from Kerry Park in Seattle, WA. For some reason, I feel like Im not doing it correctly because these don't look as sharp as other landscape photography pictures I've seen online. When I zoom in, I feel like the picture is pixelated/noisy.

Again, Im using a Canon T6s with a 14mm f2.8L II lens. My settings were aperture priority, f11, ISO 100, manual focus, picture style: landscape, white balance: cloudy, manual selection: 1pt auto focus, and self timer on 2 second. Any pointers is greatly appreciated. Thanks again!
IMG_0977 by


IMG_1706 by
IMG_1705 by

This shot is not one that needs or benefits from using hyperlocal distance. You don't have anything (at least that I can see) in the foreground that requires it. Per the DOF scale on that lens it appears that anything beyond 4-5 feet in front of the camera will be in focus at infinity. This case would be one where using infinity focus would probably have produced a slightly sharper image.

Edit:
I should clarify I am speaking about wide open aperture above. At f11 if you had truly used hyperlocal (which you didn't assuming the distance scale you show was used for this shot) everything from ~1' to infinity would have been in focus. The bottom of the frame is too dark to tell for sure but I'm pretty certain you didn't have anything in the frame that close to you. So you really didn't need f11 for this shot.

Sorry if anything I say here is confusing. In general I understand things better than I explain them. lol

 

[supraman408]

This shot is not one that needs or benefits from using hyperlocal distance. You don't have anything (at least that I can see) in the foreground that requires it. Per the DOF scale on that lens it appears that anything beyond 4-5 feet in front of the camera will be in focus at infinity. This case would be one where using infinity focus would probably have produced a slightly sharper image.

Edit:
I should clarify I am speaking about wide open aperture above. At f11 if you had truly used hyperlocal (which you didn't assuming the distance scale you show was used for this shot) everything from ~1' to infinity would have been in focus. The bottom of the frame is too dark to tell for sure but I'm pretty certain you didn't have anything in the frame that close to you. So you really didn't need f11 for this shot.

Sorry if anything I say here is confusing. In general I understand things better than I explain them. lol

Yes, everything is confusing right now but I think thats more my fault than anyone else. Il head back out there and shoot again today.

What do you mean when you say anything beyond 4-5feet in front of the camera will be in focus at infinity? Is that because of the lens or is that because of the way I had set up the distance scale for this particular shot that anything beyond 4-5feet in front of the camera would be focused at infinity?

Um I thought I was using the distance scale correctly. I lined up the 11 (bc I'm shooting at f/11) under the infinity sign using the 11 to the right of the distant scale on my lens. When doing that, the 11 to the left of the distance scale is between the 1 and 1.5ft so anything from about 1ft in front of meet will be in focus all the way to infinity. Am I using it correctly?

My thought process for using the hyperlocal distance is because I wanted the entire image to be super sharp and focused. I decided on using hyperlocal distance because I assumed that I can get anything that was 1ft in front of me to infinity focused (assuming I had set up my distance scale correctly) to give me an entire image that is super sharp and focused. I used f/11 because it was kinda dark and gloomy yesterday so I figured a little wider aperture will allow more light.

 

[kalgra]

This shot is not one that needs or benefits from using hyperlocal distance. You don't have anything (at least that I can see) in the foreground that requires it. Per the DOF scale on that lens it appears that anything beyond 4-5 feet in front of the camera will be in focus at infinity. This case would be one where using infinity focus would probably have produced a slightly sharper image.

Edit:
I should clarify I am speaking about wide open aperture above. At f11 if you had truly used hyperlocal (which you didn't assuming the distance scale you show was used for this shot) everything from ~1' to infinity would have been in focus. The bottom of the frame is too dark to tell for sure but I'm pretty certain you didn't have anything in the frame that close to you. So you really didn't need f11 for this shot.

Sorry if anything I say here is confusing. In general I understand things better than I explain them. lol

Yes, everything is confusing right now but I think thats more my fault than anyone else. Il head back out there and shoot again today.

What do you mean when you say anything beyond 4-5feet in front of the camera will be in focus at infinity? Is that because of the lens or is that because of the way I had set up the distance scale for this particular shot that anything beyond 4-5feet in front of the camera would be focused at infinity?

Um I thought I was using the distance scale correctly. I lined up the 11 (bc I'm shooting at f/11) under the infinity sign using the 11 to the right of the distant scale on my lens. When doing that, the 11 to the left of the distance scale is between the 1 and 1.5ft so anything from about 1ft in front of meet will be in focus all the way to infinity. Am I using it correctly?

My thought process for using the hyperlocal distance is because I wanted the entire image to be super sharp and focused. I decided on using hyperlocal distance because I assumed that I can get anything that was 1ft in front of me to infinity focused (assuming I had set up my distance scale correctly) to give me an entire image that is super sharp and focused. I used f/11 because it was kinda dark and gloomy yesterday so I figured a little wider aperture will allow more light.

Ok so I'm about to ramble on relentlessly and probably confuse the ever living **** out of you. LOL
Sorry about that up front. I am trying to help though.

Your thought on lining up the infinity mark for f11 was the right idea and your understanding the concept correct, but your interpretation of the infinity mark on the scale was not correct. Assuming the distance scale on this lens is calibrated you would want to put the vertical line next to the infinity symbol on the f11 mark not the infinity symbol itself. In this case you probably focused a bit past infinity and softened the shot a bit (probably not that much). Often times using live view and magnifying whats on the screen to fine tune your focus at the farthest distance object (in this case the horizon line) will show you where true infinity is on any given lens. That spot on your distance scale should be at the vertical line next to the infinity mark if the lens is properly calibrated to the distance scale. If its not you would adjust accordingly. This may or may not be effected by the fact your using a camera with a crop sensor. I don't think it does but Im sure someone else here can confirm or deny that.

All that said your shot was not one that required finding hyperlocal point or would really benefit from it in anyway. I don't see anything in this shot that was remotely 1' in front of you. Just about everything if not everything in this shot would have been sharp and in focus when focused at infinity. This is what I'm talking about with the 4-5' thing regardless of aperture. This is very typical of ultra wide lenses. Also f11 is a smaller aperture not a larger one. f2.8 in this case lets in the most light, f11 lets in much less light. Not that either really matter too much since it appears you were on a tripod and could have set your shutter speed for any aperture you wanted. For this shot you probably would have gotten the sharpest image by shooting in the lenses sweet spot of f5.6- f8 and just focusing at infinity or anything that warranted critical focus such as the city.

When you say "I wanted the entire image to be super sharp and focused" I don't think you meant that in the way that we all thought you meant it and how hyperlocal is used to achieve that. You can have everything in a shot sharp and focused without using hyperlocal distance techniques and in some cases sharper IF the conditions are right considering the distance between the nearest and furthest objects pictured in the frame as well as the focal length of the lens you are using. I think you need to read up on Aperture and Depth of Field (DOF) and how the two are related as well as how aperture effects exposure. Larger f numbers bring more of the scene into focus but let in less light. Lower f numbers bring less of the scene into focus but let in more light. This is less evident on something ultra wide lens like a 14mm that will have a deep depth of field even at 2.8.

Here are a couple example landscape shots of when its beneficial to use hyperlocal distance to make the entire image sharp and when hyperlocal distance simply is not needed and wouldn't result in a sharper better focused image.

I will use two images both shot at 20mm for my main examples as the 14mm lens you were using would have had a 22.4mm equivalent on your crop sensor camera. Hopefully this way my examples better translate.

In this shot I used a 20mm lens at f16 using hyperfocal distance in order to get the rock and fall leaves leaves nice and sharp as well as the waterfall and trees in the distance. The leaves and rock in this case where only about 12-18 inches from the front of the camera.

Eldora Waterfall by Kristian Algra, on Flickr


In this shot I didn't need to worry about hyperlocal because again using the same 20mm lens even at f8 everything beyond 3' in front of my camera was going to be sharp and in focus.

Abandoned Barn Sunset by Kristian Algra, on Flickr


I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you are pretty new to photography. So hopefully I'm not coming off rude or anything. If landscape photography is something you are going to be interested in pursuing consider that despite the fact that wide angle lenses are often recommended for landscapes and cityscapes they are not always a good choice. In fact they are seldom a good choice especially when you are trying to capture large mountains is the distance. Wide lenses push everything further away making them appear smaller. Thats why they are great when you are super close to something and need to get a lot of that something in the frame. When you are just shooting something like mountains or in this case a city which is way off in the distance a wide angle lens just diminishes it that much more.

In my opinion wide angles in the landscape world are much more difficult to use to get an impactful shot than telephoto lenses and should mostly be reserved for those scenes when you want to have a bush, flower, rock, the ground, whatever thats right in front of the lens in focus while still capturing the distant background and all its surroundings in focus.

Another thing worth mentioning is that even if you had something a few feet in front of you in this scene you couldn't have seen it anyway because the lower 1/3 of the frame is so underexposed. This is a tough shot dynamic range wise. You probably needed to bracket for HDR or use a graduated filter. You also would have had better shot if you exposed for the top of the tree line and recovered the sky in post. In my experience Canon cameras are better at recovering highlights than shadows.

In my opinion your shot would have been much better if you used a 70-200mm and shot this scene in a 3-5 frame vertical panorama.

For example here is a landscape that was way off in the distance from where I was shooting but probably about the same distance as the city in your shot. I used a 100mm in a portrait orientation and shot it as a panorama to compress the scene and keep the mountain range looking the same as I saw it with my eyes. Again no hyperlocal needed because everything was already so far in the distance it didn't matter.

Stormy Peaks by Kristian Algra, on Flickr


Anyway I hope some of this was helpful. Take most of what I say for what you think its worth. Im not a pro. Ive been at this less than 3 years and still learn new things everyday.

 

[Solarflare]

It was fairly easy to see on film cameras because most of the lenses had DoF marks.

Well I have quite a couple old Nikkor AF lenses and they already abandoned these marks safe for a small hint. Nikkor AF lenses have been released during film times (approx 1986-2000 or some such, I think ?).

And its not just old lenses. My Zeiss ZF and Voigtländer lenses have those marks too, and they're fairly recent.

So the crucial thing is probably manual focus, not so much film or not film.

Those are at best tips though. Basically I learned that if you're at f/8 use the f/5.6, even better f/4 marks, because these lens marks are far too optimistic.

So, don't zoom in! ANY camera, using ANY lens, with ANY technique, will produce a lousy picture when zoomed in. Just don't do it. You can achieve nothing by zooming in.

If you want to know how sharp your picture is, print it on paper at A3 size and look at it at arm's length. Any lack of sharpness (or any other defect!) that you cannot see is of no importance.

That assumes you never crop the image and never print larger than A3.

 

[john.margetts]

So, don't zoom in! ANY camera, using ANY lens, with ANY technique, will produce a lousy picture when zoomed in. Just don't do it. You can achieve nothing by zooming in.

If you want to know how sharp your picture is, print it on paper at A3 size and look at it at arm's length. Any lack of sharpness (or any other defect!) that you cannot see is of no importance.

That assumes you never crop the image and never print larger than A3.

The real point there is to judge sharpness by looking at the final print from a normal viewing distance for that print, not by an excessive zoom on a monitor. Also applies to a billboard - don't judge it from six inches; cross the street first.

Same, actually, applies to a picture destined to only ever be seen on a monitor - judge it by the final display, not zoomed in.

 

[Summer75]

I focus on the point that you want the eye to mainly be drawn too. So if you are shooting hills in the distance with the sunset behind it, with the ocean in front and the sea shells of the beach in the foreground..... I would pick what is the main thing you want sharp and in focus (the foreground or background). When people look at a photography, their eyes are naturally drawn to certain points through the rule of thirds, leading lines, colours, etc. With landscapes I would focus on the point that you most want to be the subject and since this can often be more than one thing (hills and the sunset) I would focus on the middle portion of where I want the eye drawn. I hope I am wording this in a way that makes sense... that is my advise. But play around and have fun with it and see what works for you.

 

[Summer75]

I should add, that generally thinking I think the "rule" is about 1/3 into the frame if a landscape is properly composed in the frame. But I see some really good advise here with some nice examples and remember the rules sometimes are best broken.