Complete focus in a landscape

Help please! I have been working on my shots with regards to a totally in focus shot of gardens that feature waterfalls. I am also shooting two senior portraits in these settings.
I am having trouble getting everything in pin point focus. I am using a tripod. My camera is a Canon xti combined with the 85 1.8 or my 70-200 2.8 lenses. I am watching my lighting although it is 100% natural. My ISO is good and I am shooing at a slow shutter speed in manual mode. My aperture is at f16 to f25. I still feel as if my shots are soft. Is there a particular focus point when shooting a person in these situations that I need to be on? When I am shooting just the landscapes where should I focus to make sure "everything" is tact sharp? Any help here would be great! Thanks.......I can provide examples if you need to see my problem.

The problem is that on a crop sensor you'll encounter diffraction occuring at smaller apertures which will cause softness.

To ensure diffraction doesn't affect your image, you don't want to stop down any further than f/11 ideally.

The only way around this is to use shorter focal lengths so you have more DOF for a given f-number and use a DOF calculator to calculate what you can get in focus.

Stopping down too much can make your photos soft due to diffraction. So softness may be from that. Make sure your tripod is steady, some just will never be as they are not made properly. Don't use the center column at all. You can also take a foreground shot and a background shot and blend the in focus areas in post processing. There are programs to do this for you.

To check your DOF use one of the on line calculators and you might want to stop down one more stop depending on how large you want to print. Many DOF charts assume an 8X10 final product and DOF does get shallower as you enlarge.

Thanks for the advice, it is appreciated very much!

Hi 352McCoy,

In addition to not using an aperture smaller than f11 (and I wouldn't even be inclined to go that small - maybe f9), you might want to focus at the hyperfocal distance to maximise DoF. If you do that, and you're using a conventional DoF table/calculator, you might find that using the hyperfocal distance for at least 1 f-stop larger than you're actually using will give you better results for large prints. This approach is recommended by Leica, for example.

Cheers

352McCoy wrote in post #5507552
Help please! I have been working on my shots with regards to a totally in focus shot of gardens that feature waterfalls. I am also shooting two senior portraits in these settings.
I am having trouble getting everything in pin point focus. I am using a tripod. My camera is a Canon xti combined with the 85 1.8 or my 70-200 2.8 lenses. I am watching my lighting although it is 100% natural. My ISO is good and I am shooing at a slow shutter speed in manual mode. My aperture is at f16 to f25. I still feel as if my shots are soft. Is there a particular focus point when shooting a person in these situations that I need to be on? When I am shooting just the landscapes where should I focus to make sure "everything" is tact sharp? Any help here would be great! Thanks.......I can provide examples if you need to see my problem.

McCoy:

There is more to it than f/stop; the focal length plays a huge role in DOF. The longer the focal length, the shorter will be the DOF.

You can try it yourself with a DOF calculator:

http://www.dofmaster.c​om/dofjs.html

First select your camera (Canon Digital Rebels),

Then enter the Focal Length you will be using (I used 70 mm because this is your shortest FL),

Then enter the f/stop (I used f/16) and hit "Calculate".

You will see a number for "Hyperfocal distance" - enter this in "Subject Distance".

Re-calculate the results:

Near Limit = 26.5 feet
Far Limit = Infinity

These are NOT going to work for landscapes because the foreground should be about four to six feet in front of the camera, and it will be fuzzy.

You simply need a shorter focal length.

Try 24 mm:

At f/11, the HFD = 8.87 feet, and:

Near Limit = 4.4 ft
Far Limit = Infinity

This works, but I would close down one stop.

It's more about the focal length than it is about the f/stop.

With my 17/55 at 17 mm, I get virtually the same DOF at f/5.6 (but I would use f/8).

Hi Glenn,

With the 70mm focal length, the FoV at 26.5ft (the near focus limit @ f16 calculated by the dofmaster calculator) would only be 8.3*5.6ft, which might be a bit small for the OP's portrait shot if he wants to include the waterfall. So moving back a bit to include more of the waterfall in the pic would only improve things.

Mind you, the smallest aperture you could use before the diffraction Airy discs become larger than the 0.019mm CoC is only f13.5, so I'd recommend against using anything smaller than that.

Cheers

McCoy - what does "near Distance" and "Far Limit" mean? That part is confusing me, almost implying that anything between those two values would work.

Did you access the link to DOF master? It's explained within.

OK ... I read (like 8 times) that DOF page ... Much clearer.. Thanks.

McCoy,,,there is a term called "Hyperfocal Distant" or "Hyperfocal Point"..When you focus near or at infinity at smaller apertures the focus and depth of field hyperthetically stretches beyond infinity..The trick is to focus well before infinity even at around the first 1/3 of the scene..With a small aperture the depth of field will start at at the point nearest the camera and continue to exactly infinity..There is a formular to work this out,,you may have to Google it..

With most quality lenses the image quality at apertures of F/16 or F/22 or even F/32 will be hardly noticable compared to say F/5.6 or F/8

yogestee wrote in post #5515371
McCoy,,,there is a term called "Hyperfocal Distant" or "Hyperfocal Point"..When you focus near or at infinity at smaller apertures the focus and depth of field hyperthetically stretches beyond infinity..The trick is to focus well before infinity even at around the first 1/3 of the scene..With a small aperture the depth of field will start at at the point nearest the camera and continue to exactly infinity..There is a formular to work this out,,you may have to Google it..

With most quality lenses the image quality at apertures of F/16 or F/22 or even F/32 will be hardly noticable compared to say F/5.6 or F/8

Right.

Hopefully the following makes some sense and isn't too long to read (as my first post may have been):

In his book Audubon Society Guide to Landscape Photography, Tim Fitzharris states;

"The image will be most arresting if it displays sharply from front to back. This can be accomplished by shooting at the smallest aperture to maximize depth of field, and by focusing about one third of the way into the picture space to center the in-focus zone over the framed area. Use your cameras' depth-of-field preview feature to check results in the viewfinder".


Elsewhere in the book, he says;

"Use the depth of field preview to view the scene at shooting aperture. Make sure the viewfinder is well hooded, give your eyes a few moments to adjust to the dimness and examine the scene carefully. Start with focus at infinity and back off until the most distant features begin to lose sharpness. Reverse focus a smidge and then examine the foremost picture elements for adequate detail. If they are not sharp, adjust to a smaller aperture, or move the tripod back from the foreground features and repeat the procedure".


He also covers the topic of diffraction resolution:

"To attain the best combination of image resolution and depth of field, you need to determine the sharpest aperture for the lens. Use this setting whenever it provides adequate DOF for your purposes. Sometimes the highest resolving power is only marginally better than an aperture two or three stops smaller. In such cases, opt for the lower resolution/greater depth of field aperture if it furthers you compositional goals".

I have included a couple samples of the
landscape I was hoping to have in focus.
As you can see these have potential I think,
but I just messed up the aperture settings.
For all of you that have taken the time to
explain the technical aspects of DOF, I can
only offer many thanks. Fantastic knowledge
as always in this forum!

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Using your shortest FL (70 mm on the zoom), you would be struggling to achieve the focus range you want even at f/45 or f/64, apertures that this lens will not achieve.

So, I don't think you messed up the aperture settings. For this type of shot, I'd likely reach for my 17/55 Canon, or the 12/24 Tokina.

McCoy,,,as Glenn mentioned you will be struggling attaining complete focus.. Teles are great for picking out detail in a landscape but not for shooting that wide panoramic style of landscape..An ultra wide angle lens is mostly favoured by landscape photographers for this..

I used to love my 20mm Nikkor when I was shooting film for landscapes..For example at F/8 I would get from 1 meter to infinity pin sharp using this lens..

Looking at your posted samples your optics not your ability are your limitations.. Try an UWA lens..