Focusing in landscape photography is often trickier than you might think. As with many things, there are more ways than one to achieve the desired result. The best way is also determined by personal preferences. This guide will help you make the best choice.
Choosing the best focusing point in a landscape photo is something a lot of beginning landscape photographers struggle with. I understand why—often, there is a lot in the frame. This difficulty increases if the desire is to get everything in focus. Where does the focus point need to be to achieve this? It’s a question I get a lot.
Instead of trying to answer this single question, it’s good to look at the other possibilities as well. Every situation can be approached in a different way. I also want to point out that in landscape photography, it’s not always necessary to get everything perfectly in focus. It might be the preference of many, but it’s not the only way to capture a great landscape photo.
Focusing on the Subject
A photo needs a subject. This applies to all photography disciplines, including landscapes. To capture a great landscape, a subject is mandatory. I believe this is the first rule in composition techniques, long before you consider the well-known composition rules.
A subject in the frame needs to be in focus. If it’s not, it won’t attract the attention it needs. Therefore, it’s a wise decision to set the focusing point on the subject. Make sure this is in focus at all times. If you are using a wide angle lens, which is often the first choice for a lot of landscape photographers, and you’re using a small aperture, there will be enough depth of field to have a significant amount of the surroundings in focus as well.
Focusing on the Horizon
The downside of the previous method—focusing on the subject—is that it might not always work to get everything in focus. If that’s important, focusing on the horizon can be the best choice. This method relies on the use of depth of field. However, this only works if the focal length of the lens used is about 24mm on full frame or less.
To put this into perspective, when a 24mm focal length is used on a full-frame camera, focusing on the horizon will offer a depth of field that starts at approximately 2.5 meters with f/8. This way, everything from 2.5 meters onward will be in focus. You can even increase the depth of field by choosing a narrower aperture or a shorter focal length.
Although you can use this method with longer focal lengths as well, the close-by depth of field distance increases quickly. With an aperture of f/8 and a 35mm focal length, the distance is 5 meters, and with 50mm, it is already 10 meters. That’s why it works best for 24mm or less and becomes less usable from 50mm onward.
Using Hyperfocal Distance
Although the depth of field is rather large when focusing on the horizon, there is a way to maximize the depth of field. This method pushes the limit of what’s possible. It’s called hyperfocal distance, and it works best with wide-angle lenses.
The method involves placing the farthest limit of the depth of field exactly on infinity. This can be accomplished by focusing on the hyperfocal distance—the distance where the depth of field ends at infinity for a particular aperture.
Looking at the example of 24mm with an aperture of f/8, the hyperfocal distance can be calculated with an app. I use PhotoPills for this, and the calculated distance is approximately 2.4 meters. Focused on this exact distance, the depth of field runs from 1.2 meters to infinity.
It can be tricky to find this exact hyperfocal distance. You could measure it with a ruler or use the augmented reality feature of PhotoPills to determine that exact distance. Often, an object one-third of the distance from the bottom of the frame is used to focus on, which in many situations comes close to the hyperfocal distance, although it’s not as precise.
When your lens has a depth of field scale, this can be used as well. These lenses are often manual-focus prime lenses. Modern lenses don’t have that scale anymore, although some cameras can show a focus scale with depth-of-field indication in the viewfinder.
It might be wise not to push the limits too much. If the depth of field does not reach infinity, this might be visible in the photo. Keep a safety margin, and you’ll be okay.
Focusing With a Longer Focal Length
Up until now, the focusing techniques have focused (pun intended) on wide-angle landscape photography. If you use a telephoto lens for landscapes, the use of depth of field is much more limited, to say the least. In this case, the circle is complete because the best point to focus on is the subject again.
If the subject is relatively close, you won’t be able to get everything in focus when using a telephoto lens, not even with an aperture of f/22. Longer focal lengths simply don’t work this way. The result is a lot of out-of-focus parts in the photo, both in front of and behind the subject. Having parts of the image out of focus isn’t necessarily bad in landscape photography. It’s a technique that can result in intimate landscapes with lots of details and a 3D feeling. You might even decrease the depth of field further by using a wider aperture to maximize the effect.
If the subject is at or near the horizon, this often translates to infinity. Focusing on infinity will ensure that everything in the photo is sharp. In this case, the aperture is used only to reduce lens softness that can occur when shooting wide open. As long as there is nothing too much in the foreground, everything will be in focus.
Beyond What’s Possible
There is a limit to how far the hyperfocal distance can take you. Even with extreme wide-angle lenses, the subject might be so close that the depth of field doesn’t reach infinity. If you need everything in focus but can’t achieve it with a normal lens, focus bracketing or a tilt-shift lens might be the solution.
With focus stacking, the depth of field is divided across a series of images by shifting the focusing distance for each shot. These separate images can be combined in software to create one single image with a depth of field that can be practically infinite. This technique works well for longer focal lengths, too.
Using the tilt function of a tilt-shift lens allows you to adjust the angle of the focus plane relative to the sensor plane. This is called the Scheimpflug principle, and it lets you align the focal plane parallel to the landscape, resulting in everything being in focus.
Perhaps you know of another way to achieve the perfect focus in a landscape photo. I invite you to share your technique in the comments below.
For most Landscapes, mounted on a tripod, with a remote shutter control, typically at F11, I first determine what, if anything in the foreground I want to be in sharp focus.
Next, I magnify the image on the LCD and adjust the focus to get what I want sharp in the foreground but no more than that, to maintain MAX DOF in the distance.
Next I magnify the distant portion of the image to evaluate if it's acceptably sharp, and if so, take the shot.
If however, I felt the distant portion could be sharper, I'll take a 2nd shot with the lens at Infinity for stacking in post, hopefully not moving the camera when doing so.
Of course, there could be situations where something mid distance is of max importance, with a desire to keep either or both the foreground and background less prominent, which would require a different technique.
This sound like a time consuming method, but an interesting one. Thanks for sharing.
If you have a foreground object you wish to keep sharp and highlight as well as objects in the midground and beyond you can always focus stack - shoot 3+ images with various focus points without moving or adjusting your camera then blend in the editing stage. After a little practice it's rather easy.
Indeed, that's why I mentioned the method as well. Personally I'll try to avoid that if possible.
Time consuming is the name of the game in landscape photography.
I have find myself always focusing towards the subject and let the rest of the elements falls into out of focus naturally. As I feel that is how our eye sees. Great article dissecting the focal planes