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hyperfocal distance

hyperfocal distance

The landscape photography is often desirable that all our photo is sharp. Contrary to what happens in the portraits in which it is desirable the subject in focus and the background out of focus, in a landscape become a blurred background usually pretty bad.

The area of \u200b\u200bthe photo that is sharp or in focus is what is called DOF (depth of field) or English depth of field.

We affirm that in portraits usually work with depth of field (DOF) minimum and maximum DOF landscapes (in general)

What we want to photograph a landscape is to find such depth of field that extends from where we start our photography to infinity. The distance from which we have clearly to infinity is what hyperfocal distance call.

DOF depends on the selected aperture, the more open the aperture the greater the DOF which could lead us to think that just might get in F32 and have the maximum DOF possible for our lens, however, by the phenomenon of diffraction of very Fs markedly impair high image quality, usually in the normal lens of a DSLR openings between f5.6 and f11 are the optimum in terms of sharpness, f16 often barely usable, and from there the diffraction generates a noticeable drop in image quality. In general the optimum point (sweet spot) of a lens in terms of sharpness is between f5.6 and f10.
The aim is then to find which is the maximum aperture (smaller F possible) to achieve the hyperfocal distance.

hyperfocal distance is calculated:

H (mm) = (f * f) / (N * c) Where


f = lens focal length [mm]
N = F-Stop
c = 0.02 mm (size of the circle of confusion which we will not talk)

Example
If you are using a 35mm lens at F8

H = 35mm * 35mm / 8 * 0.02mm H = 7656 mm


words, our hyperfocal distance is 7.6 meters which means that with the 35mm lens at F8 can draw a focus to infinity as long as there is nothing relevant to less than 7 meters from the camera.

usually a good idea to put together a little board with the hyperfocal distance for different openings of the lenses we use. This can be done by visiting this site where we can also read more about the subject.

The planchette should have for their lenses have different focal lengths which is the hyperfocal distance in the most common openings: f2.8, f4, f5.6, f8, f11, f16 (emergency use)

When assembling these tables and play with the formula we learned learn quickly some practical conclusions:

- Sometimes a function of selected lens opening to use for a given scene, sometimes a function of the scene select the lens, the table and the formula used for both.
- The ultra-wide angle of 10 to 17mm are usually in almost hyperfocal distance for any open and distance, for example F8 hyperfocal distance is about half a meter in 10mm.
- long telephoto lenses over 60mm are very useful in landscaping but should be used when the scene begins at a good distance from the camera, so they are ideal for outlines, detail of mountains, cliffs, etc. Are not practical if we object near the camera to be appear in the picture.

Consider a couple of practical scenarios

1) We have a 24mm lens and want to show a particular scene

In these cases we can calculate the hyperfocal distance at various openings and then compose based on what the lens allows. We can use either formula or tables.
For 24mm hyperfocal distances have the following:


f5.6 f4 = = 5m 7m
f8 = f11 = 2.5m 3.5m


We should then find compositions in which there is nothing less than 2.5 meters from the camera since in that case for the nearby object is in focus lose focus at infinity which is bad.

2) We are in a scene determined and want to choose which lens to use, we have a 17-55 and a 10-20

Suppose now that we have a composition in which we like to have an object at 0.9 meters from the camera and we want the focus extends from the object to infinity. Using Tables

see the various options we have for hyperfocal distance less than or equal to 0.9 meters. In 17-55

we could get in 17mm and F16 but the image quality would not be very good.
We're 10-20 and then to see that we can draw on 11mm F8 hyperfocal distance of 0.7 meters.

Conclusions:

A peck of hyperfocal distances for our lenses is a very important tool when deciding to draw landscapes allowing us to calculate the optimal aperture to use to make the entire landscape is properly crisp.