Aperture help!

[nightflowervn]

Dear all,

I need some help on this.

The other day I went to the mountain. I was on top of it overlooking a terrace rice field in the valley below. I shot a photo and set the aperture to very small, it was probably around f/29. And the photo came out like this:

Terrace rice field (http://www.xomnhiepanh.com/gallery.php?do=view&id=104899)

(Sigma 70-300, photo shot at 300 mm)

My question it: If this was your case, what would you set the aperture to be?

Great thanks to any answer of yours! Cheers, mate!

[iN5P1R3]

I recommend going to http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html. It should give you an idea of what aperture to use to achieve a certain DOF (which is what I think your question is going towards).

And, could you post the image on a different host next time? The site loads terribly slow even on my DSL connection.

[nightflowervn]

Thank you iN5P1R3, so much!

[PhotosGuy]

Did you sharpen that image? And what was your shutter speed & ISO?
I was on top of it overlooking a terrace rice field in the valley below. I'd probably shoot one at 5.6 & one at f/11.

[xarqi]

I suspect that what you have there is a case of diffraction softening. This happens at small apertures (from about f/11 on APS-C and f/16 on FF).

f/8 should do the trick for most landscape work.

[Wilt]

xarqi called it right. With APS-C, usually you are diffraction limited by f/11...anything smaller risks lost resolution

[joe mama]

Assuming you are using 1.6x, and the lens is this lens:

http://www.photozone.de/canon-eos/326-sigma-af-70-300mm-f4-56-apo-dg-macro-test-report--review?start=1

Then f/11 looks like the f-ratio that would deliver the best results.

[rumplepigskin]

I recommend going to http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html. It should give you an idea of what aperture to use to achieve a certain DOF (which is what I think your question is going towards).

And, could you post the image on a different host next time? The site loads terribly slow even on my DSL connection.
it's slow on my cable t1 also...

[yogestee]

Dear all,

I need some help on this.

The other day I went to the mountain. I was on top of it overlooking a terrace rice field in the valley below. I shot a photo and set the aperture to very small, it was probably around f/29. And the photo came out like this:

Terrace rice field (http://www.xomnhiepanh.com/gallery.php?do=view&id=104899)

(Sigma 70-300, photo shot at 300 mm)

My question it: If this was your case, what would you set the aperture to be?

Great thanks to any answer of yours! Cheers, mate!

I would like to know what shutterspeed you were using??

[Bob Newman]

Dear all,

I need some help on this.

The other day I went to the mountain. I was on top of it overlooking a terrace rice field in the valley below. I shot a photo and set the aperture to very small, it was probably around f/29. And the photo came out like this:

Terrace rice field (http://www.xomnhiepanh.com/gallery.php?do=view&id=104899)

(Sigma 70-300, photo shot at 300 mm)

My question it: If this was your case, what would you set the aperture to be?

Great thanks to any answer of yours! Cheers, mate!

If you want extreme depth of field, you get diffraction softening. There is no way round it, and it is the same for any format. The softening you get at any output size is solely dependent on the depth of field. But I'm interested in what you were aiming for, in any case. If you use a 300mm lens (you don't say whether you were shooting crop or FF) for landscape work its generally because you are aiming for compressed perspective, as in this shot here. For that, you don't need extended DoF, because the closest subject is still a long way away. You also don't say what your shutter speed was, and whether you were shooting hand held or not. Maybe some of the blur is camera shake. With a larger aperture, you would have had a faster shutter speed and less camera shake.

As for what I would have set the aperture to, it depends which format you're shooting in. Even in FF, looking at the shot, both the near and far subjects are effectively at infinity, or close, so set any aperture you want, I'd have probably gone a stop or two down from max if I had a tripod and could bear the longer exposure time, or at maximum aperture if hand held, to give a shorter shutter speed.

Bob