What Are the Best Settings for Landscape Photography?

One of the neat things about landscape photography is that you can produce vastly different images from the same scene simply by varying the choices of your basic settings. This excellent video discusses numerous situations you might encounter as a landscape photographer and the best camera settings to consider using in each of them. 

Coming to you from Mark Denney, this helpful video features him discussing various landscape photography situations, photos, and ideas and what settings one might choose for each of them. The important thing to remember is that there are no settings recipes for any situation; in other words, there are no specific parameters that are universally applicable given a specific location, weather, lighting, etc. Rather, these exist as guidelines to help you realize a creative vision. The beauty of landscape photography is that it leaves so much creativity in the hands of the photographer when it comes to how one represents the scene in front of them, and mastering the fundamental settings of your camera is the first step to realizing your creative goals. Check out the video above for the full rundown. 

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out the "Photographing the World" tutorial series with Elia Locardi.

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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7 Comments

The best setting is definitely "Landscape", just go into your phone's camera menu and select it. If there isn't one there, simply download an app for it. You're welcome!

16 minutes of hummmmm ..

How long is a piece of string?

Twice as long as half it's length ;)

How long do you need it for?

Settings I think work great for landscapes

Between 11-400mm +
f/1 to f/11 +
ISO 50-1600+

I find if I stay somewhere in this range I get a photo.

It would be good if F-Stoppers could have a section for beginners where they can re-direct anyone who’s got questions on the basics to and then focus the site on actual interviews and insights with people of interest rather than what I would classify as either Youtube “product reviewers” or “teachers”. These are the only two groups that “make it” on YouTube because ultimately that’s how you can advertise gear without investment in something of value... the tag line of YouTube should be

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