Trouble getting sharp landscapes

It appears as though there may be some mist in the photo. This could affect it as well.

Well, hmmm. It sounds like I'm doing things right so it may be the lens at those apertures. I'm going to do some experimenting an see what happens. Thanks for all the great input, I really appreciate it!

Oh, and to answer a few questions that were asked - No, there wasn't any wind. No, I didn't move my feet (I don't even think I breathed honestly lol). And I did (and always do) use the center focus point.

I still don't get why the focusing on 2' thing didn't work. Matter of fact I did a little experiment while I was out there. One of the shots I took had a bridge about 20' away. I took one shot with the focus set on 2', one with maual focus (eyeballing it), and one with auto focus - all on the bridge rail so it had a nice, contrasty line to focus on. All three of the shots were the exact same, taken with mirror lock-up and timer.

The auto focus shot was the sharpest, closely followed by my manual focus, with the 2' distance setting coming in last and not even in the ballpark. Why? I don't get it. What would make this technique not work? Others use it with no problem. It's got me baffled.

Chris

Hi Chris,

NWShooter wrote in post #2962324
This may be the most basic of questions, but I really seem to be having trouble in this area. How do you guys go about getting sharp on wide angle landscapes?

To select the best aperture and focus distance for a given combination of focal length, subject distances, anticipated enlargement factor, and desired print resolution, I use DoFMaster calculators (http://www.dofmaster.c​om) and a laser rangefinder. See my posts to this thread, beginning with #25:

https://photography-on-the.net …hread.php?t=279​951&page=2

A means for determining the aperture at which diffraction would inhibit your desired print resolution is discussed as well.

Mike Davis
http://www.accessz.com

See this: http://photodoto.com …earing-up-depth-of-field/

KAC

Thanks for that link Kenyc. So maybe part of the problem was that I was focusing at the distance of the waterfall (rocks to the left) and that made some of the closer stuff blurry. According to the blog post I should have focused 1/3 of the way in and maybe stopped down to f/8 - f/16. Like I said, i'm going to do some experimenting and see what I come up with. That is definitely something I will try.

zilch0md - Thanks for your reply and links as well. That is a great discussion and you have some extremely detailed and informative posts in it. I have it saved and will be trying to wrap my head around that as well.

Chris

Here are direct links to my posts in the thread I referenced above. This should make it a little easier to follow:

https://photography-on-the.net …hp?p=2756604&po​stcount=25

https://photography-on-the.net …hp?p=2780643&po​stcount=39

https://photography-on-the.net …hp?p=2784205&po​stcount=45

https://photography-on-the.net …hp?p=2786373&po​stcount=54

https://photography-on-the.net …hp?p=2788383&po​stcount=57

The second post (#39) details how I select my aperture and focus distance when shooting landscapes, step-by-step. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea - I'm just sharing how I get the job done.

Mike Davis
http://www.AccessZ.com