Which F-Stop?

i never do landscape photography with my SLR. In fact, I've only done landscape with point and shoots because they seem to just focus into infinity.

What I usually find though is that unless I'm <24mm or something, No matter how high I put the F-stop the landscape is technically pretty blurry.

I am not gonna buy a new lens for a while so I'm pretty much going to use my kit lenses. Any suggestions in settings(average day brightness) in regards to F-Stop, zoom length, etc. to get the picture of even moderate sharpness?

The "sweet spot" for sharpness for most lenses is f/8 to f/11. The lower end lenses can be pretty soft wide open, and even when stopped down to f/5.6.

I'd suggest playing with this depth of field calculator:

http://www.dofmaster.c​om/dofjs.html

Start with f16 and focus about a third of the way into the scene. It will come around for you - keep experimenting.

Zoom length really is a compositional matter which is different...it all depends on what you want in your photo.

Start with some of the basics - are you using a tripod? If yes, are you using a shutter release cable? If not, have you got a shutter speed fast enough to eliminate camera shake induced blurriness?

Now, setting your camera for the shot, turn the dial round to M or Av. Set your aperture to a value between f/8 and f/16 for better front to back sharpness. Set the shutter speed (if using M), set iso to 100 and take a shot. See how it looks and if still blurry, maybe the shutter speed is too slow for hand holding so adjust your iso and shutter speed and try again.

More tips:

http://www.cambridgein​colour.com/tutorials.h​tm
http://www.ephotozine.​com …-to-Landscape-Photography
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorial​s/

No offense, but you need better technique. Certainly use a tripod if you are not already. Unless your lens is crap, you should not be getting consistently blurry images like you speak of. I will shoot between f/16-22 most the time to achieve good depth of field in my landscape shots. This will reduce the light coming in and a solid tripod is worth its weight in gold here of course. As mentioned above, use a remote shutter. If you don't have one yet, or want to wait on that purchase, just use the in camera timer.

When you say 'focus a third of the way into a scene' would you aim the centre AF point a third of the way in, half press, then re-compose and fully press? How do you achieve that when using a tripod?

I presume you would aim at the focal point , then compose using the thirds rule of thumb.
Yes you can use tripod, because once you have focused you can switch to m/f.

Read "The Camera" by Ansel Adams. All your questions will be answered.

Besides all of the above, become familiar with your DOF preview button on the camera. And don't rely on the "focusing 1/3 of the way" into the scene...this distance is very dependent on several variables and can vary with subject distance, focal length, and lens aperture.

just a silly question here but sometimes you have to ask.

Does your lens have IS...if this is on with your lens while on a tripod it will give you blurry images as well.

also it helps to lock up the mirror

nprdavid wrote in post #7434564
Does your lens have IS...if this is on with your lens while on a tripod it will give you blurry images as well.

really?

why

I learned this in another thread. IS compensates for movement. If there is no movement, IS still tries to compensate and will actually cause camera shake in your images. It's like they say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

sued5320 wrote in post #7591182
I learned this in another thread. IS compensates for movement. If there is no movement, IS still tries to compensate and will actually cause camera shake in your images. It's like they say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Whoa that is freaking weird lol so i should turn off my IS when it is on a stable surface [Such as tripod]

CanonGlass3 wrote in post #7631877
Whoa that is freaking weird lol so i should turn off my IS when it is on a stable surface [Such as tripod]

Yes, at least if you are doing long exposure.

sued5320 wrote in post #7591182
I learned this in another thread. IS compensates for movement. If there is no movement, IS still tries to compensate and will actually cause camera shake in your images. It's like they say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Be aware that this really only applies to lenses with older IS implementations (100-400, etc). Lenses with newer IS units are typically "tripod sensing", which means that they will not suffer from the feedback induced vibrations that you are describing; indeed, often with very long lenses it is still useful to have IS operational to help deal with vibrations that are not fully controlled by the tripod itself.