As a landscape photographer, you probably want everything in your photos to look as sharp as
possible. And if you've ever been out in the field and had difficulties getting everything
from the foreground to the background in focus at once, then you know how difficult this can be.
So in this scene, with flowers in the foreground and a mountain in the distance,
where would I focus to get everything to be as sharp as possible? Well,
if you think about it, the answer would be somewhere between the flowers and the
mountain. Because if I only focus on one, then the other could be noticeably blurry.
So, the best compromise is just to meet somewhere in the middle. Specifically,
there's going to be one point between the foreground and the background where both of them
are equally sharp, and that point is called the hyperfocal distance. Let's talk about that next.
So, how do you find the hyperfocal distance in the field? Well, different photographers might give
you different answers. Some might say, focus a third of the way into the scene. Others might say,
use hyperfocal distance calculators. But these methods are either too difficult to
put into practice or just plain inaccurate. Instead, there's one method that is always
accurate that's very easy to remember, and that's the doubling the distance method.
So, how does this method work? Well, all you need to do is look at the scene in front of
you and ask yourself: In the final photo that you're about to take, which item is
the closest to your camera that you still want to appear sharp? For example, in this scene,
the closest element of my photo that I still want to appear sharp is a flower, and it's
about two feet away from my camera. Well, thanks to the double the distance method, I know that I
need to focus at exactly four feet away -- double that two feet. If I focus at four feet away, then
everything from that flower to the mountain in the background will be as sharp as it can possibly be.
And it's not just this one example where doubling the distance applies. If I'm at
a scene where my closest element is 5 feet away, I'm going to focus 10 feet
away. Or if I'm at an overlook where my closest element is already at infinity,
then my hyperfocal distance is infinity. It's something that also doesn't depend upon
meters versus feet. No matter what system you use, it's just double the distance.
As you already know, there are a number of factors that influence your depth of field,
including your aperture, your focal length, and your camera to subject distance. Out of all of
these though a lot of landscape photographers end up defaulting to just using smaller and
smaller apertures when they need more depth of field. And this does work, but it's not
necessarily the ideal method. For example, if you're shooting even at a very small aperture,
you might have something that's so close to your lens that it's still out of focus,
even if you're at the hyperfocal distance. Because the hyperfocal distance -- although
it does maximize the amount of depth of field that you get -- sometimes it's impossible to
get enough depth of field, if something is really, really close to your camera.
Instead, a better option is usually just to move your camera backwards a little bit and increase
the camera-to-subject distance. In fact, just moving your camera back by less than a foot can
increase your depth of field very significantly. And that's why, as a landscape photographer,
that's usually my default method; rather than using a smaller and smaller aperture, just
moving the camera backwards a little bit almost always solves the depth of field problem. Now,
if you don't want to move your camera backwards for whatever reason, you also have the option
just to raise the camera up a little higher and then tilt it forwards, and that does increase
your camera-to-subject distance, giving you a larger depth of field. However, this does come
with a compromise -- it changes your framing, just like moving the camera backwards would -- which
is why some photographers invest in tilt-shift lenses or bellows systems that let them tilt
the plane of focus to intersect with the entire landscape without compromise. Although tilt-shift
lenses are great options, they do come with some compromises of their own. For example,
they don't zoom, they don't autofocus, and they typically are expensive specialty lenses.
For that reason, a lot of landscape photographers prefer just a normal lens,
and the way that they get enough depth of field is by focusing at the hyperfocal distance,
using a wide enough angle lens, using a small enough aperture, and standing far enough back
from their subject. This might sound like a lot to remember, but it's actually pretty simple in
the field. Just focus at double the distance, use a small enough aperture, and if you still
don't have enough depth of field, just step back a little bit. If you can do those things,
then you'll end up with photos that have exactly the depth of field that you need.
At this point, it's nearing sunset, so I'm going to move locations slightly to
a landscape that doesn't have quite as obvious of a foreground -- just a more
general river with some grasses. And I still want them to be completely sharp,
with enough depth of field. So I'll demonstrate how hyperfocal distance works in that case.
I've moved locations. It's still the same mountain in the background, but a different foreground.
And again I want everything in the photo to be as sharp as possible, and in this case,
the closest element to my lens is some grass at the bottom of the frame. And it's about
5 feet away from my camera, so the hypefocal distance would be double that -- 10 feet away.
And that's roughly corresponding to the front of the island in the middle of this river. So,
I've already focused on the front of that island. I'm shooting at an aperture of f/11.
I'm standing far enough away from my subject, so I feel very confident that this photo will have
enough depth of field. So, in order to focus on this scene, all I did was enter Live View,
move my focusing point down to the front of that island, and just focus. And so right now,
if I take a test photo, as you can see when I review it, I can zoom in,
and you'll notice -- from the very top of the mountain all the way to the grass on the bottom
of the frame -- everything is completely sharp. And that's exactly what I want it to be. And
now is also the best time to be testing focus, because it's not yet sunset; it'll be another
15 minutes or so. Hopefully we'll get some really beautiful light, but this is the perfect time to
optimize everything so that you don't need to worry about it when the light is right.
I'm back in the studio after a really nice sunset where I captured a couple of photos that
demonstrate hyperfocal distance, and one of them in particular is this image. So as you can see,
this photo looks relatively sharp, but it won't be until I actually zoom in -- first
to one-to-one magnification, and then two-to-one magnification -- so that you can see how sharp
it really is. So I'll start by doing that just in the foreground right here. Now,
this is one-to-one magnification, and at this point I'm not even sharpening the photo at all,
so this is a completely unsharpened image. And this is the closest object in the photo,
just the grass at the bottom of the frame. And as you can tell, it looks completely sharp, and
that's true even as I move the photograph a little bit farther to the left and right. You can see
just how sharp it is. On top of that, though, it's not just the grass in the foreground that's sharp;
it's also the mountain in the distance that has a lot of little detail. So let me show you that.
So, as you can see, the mountain -- just like the grass -- looks very, very sharp. So now,
zooming in to two-to-one magnification, you can see this is very, very sharp on the mountain. And
the same is true if I just click on the bottom of the frame, and you look around here. And,
once again, this is without any sharpening applied, and I'm at f/9, focused at the
hyperfocal distance. Now, if you remember where I was when I took this picture in the field,
I was about 10 feet away from an island in the middle of a stream, and the closest objects in
my foreground were about 5 feet away -- which is why I focused on the front of the island.
Specifically, I focused right about here in this image, because that's my hyperfocal distance.
It's double the distance to the closest object in my photo, and that closest object is the grass.
The last thing that I'd like to point out about this image is that there are
a couple of parts of it that are a little softer than the others. Maybe they're not
quite as sharp as you'd like -- for example, something like the bottom right corner. Or,
I can also switch over to the bottom left corner; maybe even these trees up here. There's definitely
a noticeable loss of sharpness -- and why is this? Is it because I didn't focus properly,
or is it something else? Well in this case, the specific culprit is very simple: It's just the
fact that lenses aren't quite as sharp along their edges and their corners as they are in the center.
So, I actually did focus at the correct hyperfocal distance, as you can tell from the grasses at the
bottom of the frame that are very, very sharp. And the only reason why the edges of this image aren't
quite as sharp as they could be is simply because my lens just isn't as sharp on the edges as it is
in the center. And this is also something that you'll notice in your own images. Even if you're
focused at the perfect hyperfocal distance, and you're using a small enough aperture to
give you the right depth of field, the edges and corners of your photos still might not be quite
as sharp as the center. And that has nothing to do with your technique; it's entirely a
result of lens design. So, if that is the case in your own photos, that's completely expected.
So that about wraps it up for hyperfocal distance. I've covered most of the important
points. And if you like, you can even take this photo that I have,
download the full RAW file from our video course, and explore it yourself to see how sharp it is.