How to Take Sharp Landscape Photos

When it comes to landscape photography, sharpness is often one of the top priorities. If that is something you want to improve in your images, check out this excellent video tutorial that details a straightforward process for coming home with sharp photos every time you head out with your camera. 

Coming to you from Perea Photography, this great video details a simple process for getting sharp images in landscape photography. There are often several ways to get a sharp photo, with increasing overhead as you increase the area of acceptable sharpness. Using a narrow aperture is the first step, but you will run into issues with diffraction if you take that too far. The next step is to calculate the hyperfocal distance to maximize the area of acceptable sharpness. This will often be enough. However, if you want the absolute best sharpness from front to back, you will want to turn to focus stacking. This requires the most work, but it will also give the best results. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Perea. 

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out "Photographing The World 1: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing 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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4 Comments

Don't know... Not much sold into photo stacking. Of course FS has its place, but most of the photos (of others) are single shot ones that has natural sharp and blur (similar to how we see - closest and farthest away from the focus are blur).

But it's a good post processing skill to have for landscape photographers.

Yeah, 1 shot.
F8, tripod, remote or timer used, etc etc

I wish someone would do a good tutorial or info piece on the diffraction of modern-day lenses and cameras. It seems to be an area of conflict. I have watched a number of videos talking about using higher f-stops, and not talking about diffraction, which can diminish sharpness. If it really does diminish sharpness then why not keep the diffraction set to on in our cameras?

I would also like to see images before and after, using the same high f-stop with and without the setting of diffraction in today's modern cameras. It's obviously been designed and implemented by Mfg.s in their menu systems for a reason, but how does it look and function?

At one point in Mike Perea's video, he suggests using higher f-stops, but then cautions about diffraction?

Good video. I never use Hyperfocal distance very much. Manual Focus and focus peaking, and then punch in and check the corners front and back. I have used Focus-Stacking, with mixed results.

It's a good point you bring up. I've shot landscapes at F18 on multiple occasions and never had visible diffraction negatively impact the image. If I zoom in 200% could I see it? Maybe. But having the entire image acceptably sharp is a higher priority than trying to do a focus stack with moving elements in the frame.

I guess the term acceptably sharp is the key as that's going to differ for everybody.