@ unkyUb
>>> I am hoping Sue will take me into the countryside later so I can at long last try the new camera out. <<<
Improve Your Photography with TD's Tip of the Day.....................
Tip #1 maximise sharpness.
Hyperfocal Focusing.
Hyperfocal focusing is a technique used by landscape photographers in order to maximise depth-of –field.
In order to fully grasp the principles of HF, it is necessary to understand fully how depth-of-field works.
Depth-of-field (DOF) is the amount of front to back sharpness in an image.
You may want a wide ( broad, deep) DOF in your landscapes where you want the image to be pin sharp from the tips of your toe-caps to the horizon, or you may want a narrow (shallow) DOF when capturing a flower, animal, portrait and where you wish the subject to stand sharp and proud against a blurred out foreground and background.
DoF can be adjusted in three ways :-
1) changing the aperture setting on the lens
2) changing lenses
3) changing the camera to subject distance.
Aperture.
The size of the aperture in the iris of the lens is expressed by f-numbers in a scale ranging from f2, f2.8, f4 etc etc up to f22, f32
The larger numbers indicate a smaller aperture and these give more DOF whilst the smaller numbers indicate a larger aperture and afford less DOF.
Lenses
A wide angle lens will give more DOF than a telephoto, so that a 28mm at f22 will afford more DOF than a 200mm at the same f-number of f22.
Camera to subject distance.
The further you are from your subject the greater the DOF, the closer you are the narrower the DOF at any given f-number.
So by using one or a combination of the above variants, you can control DOF to a fine degree and can have at your disposal an infinite number of DOF configurations.
Among these variances, however, there is one constant………….one factor that remains in force however much you tweak DOF and that is that, always, one third of the available DOF lies in front of your point of focus and two-thirds of the available DOF lie behind your point of focus
That is the important bit, one third DOF in front, two thirds behind your point of focus.
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Now, when you are taking a landscape shot, where are you focusing ? Most inexperienced snappers will focus on the horizon………..big mistake.
If your point of focus is on the horizon, you have focused at infinity…there is nothing beyond the horizon…………….nothing to take the benefit of that two thirds of your lovely DOF which lies beyond your point of focus. That part of the DOF is therefore lost and you are left with only the one third that lies in front of your point of focus.
You then end up with a nice sharp horizon but that sharpness very quickly tails off as the scene gets closer until you finish up with a blurry foreground.
What to do ?
The technique is to focus at a point one third of the way into your scene, be it a tree, stone, house or just a point on the ground.
That point one third into the scene is the Hyperfocal Point and by finding it and focusing on it, you are using hyperfocal focusing. And by doing that you have "room" to have your one third DOF in front of that point and two thirds behind......maximun depth of field.
On a fixed focal length lens, it is simple to determine that hyperfocal point by using the inscribed distance scale in conjunction with the aperture scale. These scales do not appear on zoom lenses in any meaningful manner due to the complexity of the infinite amounts of focal lengths you can achieve on a zoom……..there is simply no room to inscribe all the scales for all the focal lengths so……….to find the hyperfocal point with a zoom, it is a question of looking through it at your scene, choosing a hyperfocal point, focus on that and hold that focus then recompose the scene.
Fiddly, but the end results are worth it.
