Focusing for Landscape Photography: Hyperfocal Distance

One of the most vexing problems is trying to figure out how to get everything in your photograph sharp from near to far. If you're doing wildlife or people photography, focusing is usually pretty easy because you're relying on selective focus. Where you have your subject sharp and in focus. But the background is nicely blurred. So it's pretty simple, you just focus on your subject. Choose a wide open aperture, big aperture like F2.8 or F4. And your subject's gonna be nice and sharp and in focus. And everything else around your subject, will be artistically blurred. And that's pretty easy to do. But if you're shooting landscape, where you need to have everything from often very close to you to very, very far away. For example, in this scene. I've got some rocks here in the foreground that are maybe about four or five feet away from my camera lens. And then I've got the background scene, which is several hundred feet away. Sometimes when I'm making photographs, I'll have a background scene that's several miles away. You've gotta make sure that you have a zone of focus. Of apparent focus. Of sharpness that extends from very, very close to you to very, very far away. So you can't just focus on your subject because it's not really entirely clear in a scene like this what your subject is. Is my subject the foreground? These rock formations that are a few feet away? Is my subject the background? I think it's far to say that with a landscape scene, the entire scene is your subject. So you wanna make sure everything is in focus. But that doesn't tell you where to focus. And it also doesn't tell you what aperture to use to make sure that you get everything from near to far sharp. So what you have to do is rely on something called hyperfocal distance. Which is a hypothetical point to focus on that will extend your apparent zone of sharpness from near to far. And then you have to choose an aperture that will be small enough that will extend what is called depth of field to cover everything in your scene. So we've got several important concepts here. The first is. Concept known as hyperfocal distance. Really what hyperfocal distance is. Is choosing a focus point that's gonna optimize your ability to extend the zone of sharpness from all the objects that are close to you, to all the objects that are far away to you in your chosen landscape composition. So when you focus on something, really all you're doing is focusing on that one very particular point. But that focus appears to extend beyond just that point. To the human eye. So the hyperfocal distance is a point that you focus on that is going to optimize your ability to get sharp apparent focus from near to far. The second concept that we need to understand is known as depth of field. And depth of field is the zone of apparent focus. So when you stop down and use a smaller aperture, you're extending your depth of field. So for example, if you are shooting with a lens that has a widest open aperture of F2.8. Basically, where you focus, that's gonna be in focus only. And everything else around it is going to be increasingly blurred as it gets farther and farther away from your focus point. But as you stop down and use smaller apertures. Like F11, F16, or F22. That zone of apparent focus spreads out farther and farther until you get a bunch of stuff that's in front of your focus point and a bunch of stuff that's behind your focus point in apparent sharp focus. Hyperfocal distance, depth of field. All of this can be really confusing. So I like to use what I consider to be a fairly simple analogy. I like to think of the depth of field I need in my composition as a pond. With the nearshore representing the foreground, the closest objects in my scene. The far shore of the pond representing the background, the farthest objects in my scene. And the entire pond representing everything in the scene that I need in focus. In this analogy, a stone is my aperture. And when I throw the stone into the water. Ripples emanate from where the stone lands. And those ripples represent depth of field. If I throw a small stone in the water, that represents a wide open aperture like F2.8. When I throw one of these in the water. I get some ripples, but they don't really spread out very far. So when you're using a wide open aperture, like F2.8 or F4. You don't really get a lot of depth of field from that. On the other hand, if I use a small aperture. Like F22, represented here by this very heavy stone. And I throw this in the water. It makes a terrifically huge splash. And I get ripples that spread out very, very far from the point of impact. Representing a large amount of depth of field. The next variable that we have to consider, is hyperfocal distance. With the pond analogy, hyperfocal distance is where I throw the stone. So for example, when I have my near-far composition setup. If I focus on the background. If I throw the stone way over to the far shore of the pond. Those ripples are gonna cover the far shore of the pond. But they're not gonna make it here to the nearshore of the pond. So depth of field will cover the background, but it won't make it to the foreground. On the other hand, if I focus on my foreground. Or as the case may be. Throw the rock close to the nearshore of the pond. Those ripples are gonna hit the nearshore, but they're not gonna make it to the far shore. So depth of field is gonna cover my foreground, but it's not gonna make it to my background. Ideally, I need to set a focus point that's somewhere in-between my foreground and my background. And that point, that optimum point of focus, is the hyperfocal distance. So to complete the analogy. To make sure the ripples extend out to hit all portions of the shoreline of the pond equally. I need two things. One, I need to make sure that I throw the rock in the right place. And second of all, I need to make sure that the rock's heavy enough. So that the ripples spread out and hit the shoreline all around the pond. In other words, I need to select a focus point that's somewhere in-between the near and farthest objects in my scene. The hyperfocal distance. And I have to select a small enough aperture to make sure that the zone of depth of field extends from that hyperfocal point and covers all portions of the scene equally. So hyperfocal distance is telling you where to focus in the scene. As I said earlier, in a landscape scene, everything is your subject. So you can't just focus randomly. You have to be very precise and pick your focus point to optimize your near-far sharpness potential. So there's a lot of different ways that you can calculate hyperfocal distance. Sometimes people will have an app on their phone that purports to calculate hyperfocal distance. People will use these charts and these graphs. These complex mathematical formulas. For the most part, I think those are pretty useless. So I tend to use a simple rule of thumb. At least when I'm doing wide-angle landscape work. Is I estimate the distance from my camera to my closest foreground object. So in this particular scene, I would say about four or five feet away from the rock formations that are at the very lower part of my image frame. And then what I do, is I simply double that distance. And that is my hyperfocal point. That is where I focus. So if my closest object is four or five feet away, I'll focus instead at about eight or 10 feet. So instead of focusing on these foreground rocks, I'll focus on the rocks that are just behind me here. About eight or 10 feet away. And that will be my optimal focus point. That'll allow me to have sharpness in front of that focal point and behind it. So once I've determined my hyperfocal distance. As I said earlier, in this particular scene, it's gonna be about eight or 10 feet away. Which is double the distance between my camera lens and the nearest foreground elements in my composition. Then I have to figure out what aperture to use to extend the zone of apparent focus from near to far to make sure everything in the scene is sharp. Now for most landscape work, I find that I'm usually using at least F11. And as a general matter, I try to avoid some of the smallest apertures. Like F16 or F22 if I can. Because when you use really small apertures, there's an optical effect known as diffraction that begins to increasingly kick in. And what diffraction does, is it limits the overall quality and sharpness of the image. So as you stop down more, you may get more of the scene in focus. But diffraction is gonna slightly limit that image quality. So there's gonna be a certain softness to it. Most lenses are at their sharpest at about F8 or F11 from corner to corner. So I try to use those apertures if I can. If I can get away with it. If those apertures will give me enough depth of field. If I'm working with really extreme near-far scenes, where I'm only a few feet away from my foreground, then I'm gonna need to stop down more. So when you're first starting out, it might be a good idea to do what I call depth of field bracketing. You might wanna shoot the scene at F11, and then shoot it at F16, and then at F22. And then later on, when you're on the computer, you can critically assess all three images and pick the one that works best for you. As you get more experience, you kinda get a feeling for what aperture that you need. F11 is almost always my go-to aperture when I'm shooting landscape. And that usually gives me enough depth of field to cover even some extreme near-far scenes when I'm working with wide-angle lenses.