Focusing techniques in your landscapes

I have been photographing for roughly 15 years, and although I know the rules of hyper focal distance and focusing within the first 1/3 of the frame, I often find even on a tripod with mirror lockup and using a remote trigger I am still getting less than desirable sharpness. I use my 70-200mm f/4L, and my 16-35 f/2.8L mostly and have tested my other lenses. Any thoughts, tips, tricks, or otherwise will open up a wide range of discussion on this. Thank you!
And it happens with both my Canon 6D and my EOS T1i.

Would you mind sharing a photo where the sharpness is less than desirable to you?

This image is obviously compressed to be able to post but zoomed in the focus is horrible. I had my camera on my monfrotto ball head and I believe was stopped down to f/22 using my 16-35mm f/2.8L. The specks on top right are snow it was slightly snowing when I took this. Thank you for checking this out and replying.

OK, well, the first thing that anyone will tell you is that f/22 is going to put you deep in the realm of softness due to diffraction. That said, your sample image looks acceptably sharp all the way through at this web size. It could benefit from some good web sharpening, but nothing looks out of focus. If you want to avoid diffraction with such a wide depth of field, then you need to get into focus stacking (a.k.a. DoF Blending), which involves taking a series of images at a wider aperture (ideally where your lens is most sharp) and then blending them together in post, either with Photoshop or else one of the dedicated stacking programs like Zerene or Helicon Focus.

Alaskan Photographer wrote in post #17399959
This image is obviously compressed to be able to post but zoomed in the focus is horrible. I had my camera on my monfrotto ball head and I believe was stopped down to f/22 using my 16-35mm f/2.8L. The specks on top right are snow it was slightly snowing when I took this. Thank you for checking this out and replying.

I see what you are saying about the focus, the front snow is quite soft. Focus stacking will give you all the sharpness you need. As you are on a tripod, taking multiple shots with a different focus point will make it easy to blend in post.

It helps to develop a workflow in the field for how you like to focus stack so that you can quickly get the shots you need without futzing around too much. For me, my first shot is the background where the sun is as I want to make sure I get that shot wile the sun/sky is blazing away. So my first shot is for correctly exposing the sky/sun (I blend that separately after I blend all of the images used for the focus stack). Then, without changing focus, I change the exposure for the land and take that shot. Then I refocus for the closest object in the frame and take that exposure. Then I will change the focus point and take shots from that closest point until I am back where I started at the background of the image. This workflow is kinda ass-backwards as it probably makes more sense to work from the background to the foreground since my first shot is focused on the background, but it works for me. If the sun if falling fast, I don't even look at the Live View to check my focus, I just quickly change focus and snap shots. If your exposure is only at, say, 1/2 second, you can grab all of those shots in a few seconds, it doesn't take long when you get the hang of it.

Then you just load those images into Photoshop and use Edit/Auto-Align layers and then Edit/Auto-Blend layers and PS will blend for focus. PS usually doesn't get it 100% correct so you will have to zoom in and check all areas and anywhere it's not in focus, find the image that has that spot in focus and mask it back in.

Just as an example, the below shot was 3 images, one for the leaf/rock, one for the midground and one for the waterfall/background, all taken at f/11. If memory serves the midground/background images were acceptably sharp from the point of focus to the background so I probably only need 2 exposures to blend this shot.

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …/in/photostream​/lightbox/

Gently Down the Stream

It's a good question because so often people make statements which IMO totally miss the point - like 'I shoot UWA so only ever need f8 to get everything in focus' and 'never stop down to f22 because of diffraction'. Notice I said 'never'. Of course f22 WILL soften the image at the focal plane compared to a larger aperture, but it might still be better than having parts OOF.

Point being that it's not trivial to choose the exact 'best' focus point and aperture to get the 'optimal' sharpness across an image. And then what you choose can also depend on the lens characteristics. Personally I often use the back LCD and DOF preview (which I can lock down using ML) and then scan the corners, near and horizon changing the aperture and focal point to optimist what I think is important and what trade-offs I'm willing to make.

Having said that, focus stacking can indeed be very useful. I agree 100% with David but don't be afraid to try your own system. I may not always follow what David outlines (he probably doesn't either), but it is often something like that for landscapes (as opposed to macro where it is much more disciplined) due to the changing light.

I would also point out that in focus stacking an object OOF in the foreground can obscure an object in the background. To avoid this you can stop down. Obviously you then still trade off this aspect of focus stacking with your scene and how much you stop down and allow diffraction. HOWEVER, what I have found is that even focus stacking at f16 on FF (or f11 on crop) the image at the focal plane is still substantially sharper than at the edge of the DOF.

What this means if that you can focus stack at f11-f16 and not have to worry too much about exactly where you are focused each time (as with David's technique) and still end up with a much sharper overall picture. (with macro you quite often have to be very careful about how many images you use and what focus step you use). Often, I will just focus on the foreground, take a shot at f16, focus at infinity, take another at f16 and be done (and better off than trying 1 shot with HFD).

Of course it does require some PP effort. I also use Helicon focus to stack images, even if I have just two, because it adjusts for focus breathing.

You might also check out this thread:

https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1190120

Phrasikleia wrote in post #17400414
OK, well, the first thing that anyone will tell you is that f/22 is going to put you deep in the realm of softness due to diffraction.

The #1 culprit here.

Everything has pretty much been covered, just putting in another vote for focus stacking. I can be extremely picky with what I consider "acceptable sharpness" in an image and frequently focus stack my images. Its very easy shooting on a tripod and photoshop does a great job woth auto blending. I shoot around f8-11 and shoot as many frames as the scene needs...anywhere from 2 to 10 frames if I have very close foreground elements

Ok as nobody has mentioned it I will....

Hyperfocal distance, basically using the physics of the lens and focussing at a calculated point to give you the maximum dof for a set aperture. Think of it as min/maxing your lens. If you know that your lens is going to get soft after f16 and choose to shoot at f12 to be safe, you can look up the values you need to set for your lens. We know that there is a plane parallel to the sensor (for non tilt shift lenses) this is in focus, stuff either side of that plane will be in acceptable focus up until when a point is resolved as a disk big enough to be seen by the human eye at normal viewing distances and dpi.

The good news is that you can look these values up for your lens, for example a 24mm lens on a full frame camera at f8 has a hyperfocal distance of 2.42m, so if you focus at 2.42m everything from infinity to 1.34m in front of the lens will be in acceptable focus if printed at acceptable dpi and viewed from a reasonable distance. Pixel peepers beware.

We now run into the main problem with using HFD, scales on modern lenses are rubbish, its almost impossible to set an accurate scale. The workaround is to guess what is 2.4m away from the camera, prefocus on that and shoot away. I have struggled to get this to work reliably, even considered buying a laser range finder to mount beside the camera but it just wasn't worth it.

I strongly suggest you have a look at the following link Northlight Images on HFD as it has some interesting things to say, not my site but well worth a read.

Hope that helps

BearSummer