Hyperfocal Distance

[russellsnr]

Hi, Ok I no what Hyperfocal Distance is and why on occasion you would use it but I am struggling a little.
Example, you go the beach and a couple feet in front of you are rocks/pebbles you want to be in focus, in the water there is a large rock also you want that in focus, across the water is a coastline and yes you want that in focus also.
You can estimate the distance from the camera to the shore rocks two feet in front but you cannot get to the large rock in the water to get that distance, distant shoreline is obviously at infinity.
I am attaching an example and as can be seen the rocks at camera are in focus but the rock in the water in not.
Taken at F8 15 secs, tripod.
thanks
Russ

[chauncey]

I never could wrap my head around that subject...I would simply take several images with deeper
focus points then stack them.

[Brev00]

If the rocks are but two feet away, you can see in a hyperfocal chart that F 8 is not going to be small enough. In fact, I would move a foot or so back to give maybe f 13 a chance. Definitely, examine a dof chart to give the required settings. Even then, I would take a couple varying the point of focus to see what works. And compare those to a simple f 11 shot at the midground rocks.

[Polar01]

Russell a lot also depends on the lens used to take the image, wide angle works great telephoto not so well, also do not worry about stopping down to f/18 or more. what you want sharp is the fore ground, middle, and remember what is at the horizon your eye can not see sharp anyways, and yes diffraction my happen if you are looking at your images at 100% or more.

Cheers: Allan

[Inkanyezi]

My approach in such a case is somewhat like chauncey's, although I would try to get it in a single shot, by tilting my lens forward.

There mostly isn't such a hyperfocal distance, that you can get everything from a couple of feet away to infinity sharp.

Then again, the idea behind the hyperfocal distance is that you should not focus on the closest rocks, but somewhere beyond them, hoping that your circle of confusion will not be too large at the closest rocks or at infinity. In your image example, focus is set on the closest rocks, not beyond them, so you have not approached the scene applying the idea of hyperfocal shooting.

With most digital cameras, it is difficult to set the lens to hyperfocal distance. With a fully manual lens, mechanically driven, it is easy. So hyperfocal shooting essentially is for fully manual lenses. Most old prime lenses have a DOF scale adjacent to the distance scale on the focusing ring, where the depth of field may be estimated. When such a lens is set so that the distant DOF mark of the aperture you use is at the infinity mark, the lens is set at hyperfocal distance.

In the image below, the camera has an old 35 mm lens from Chinon, and you can see that it is set for hyperfocal distance at f/8 for full frame, 24x36 mm. However, as it is mounted on a µ4/3 camera, the aperture should be set two stops narrower for the same depth of field, hence f/16. If a full frame lens is used on a crop camera with APS-C sensor, the numbers on the DOF scale should be incremented one step to get the correct value for DOF.

You can see here, that the 35 mm lens on µ4/3 will render a DOF of 2,4 m to infinity when set to 4,8 m at f/16. There is no way to come as close as 2" using hyperfocal distance. However, this is a short tele lens on the µ4/3 camera. If you use a wide angle, you can indeed get a hyperfocal distance as close as a couple of feet.

[chauncey]

If you are going to take this silly hobby seriously, you must be willing to travel the long journey.
It does include learning photography as well as post processing. Should you ever stumble across an
image worthy of printing, viewing it at 100-500% is crucial when seeking any potential screw-ups,
such as diffraction or, simply a dirty lens.
Avoiding such problems during the initial shoot is kinda a must-do scenario.

Viewing distance, IMHO...I would suggest that is reserved for paintings and not photography.
When I visit an Art Show and evaluate one's work, I first look from afar and then, put my nose up close,
tis the only way to judge IQ.

[russellsnr]

Hi, Many thanks for ALL the views.
One of the things that I cannot really get the head round is that if you have a full frame camera and set for example 16mm on the lens and the guy or girl opposite has a Canon 1.6 crop with a 10-22mm lens that will give 16mm what is the or why is there a differance on a HD chart or DOFMaster even, as the focus distance /object would be the same distance away from the sensor?
Russ

[BrianA61]

Russel, I suspect in your image that your point of focus was actually on the rocks and not set at hyperfocal distance. I have tried this technique on occasion and found it a bit awkward. You will have to turn off AF or set your lens to manual focus. Determine what the hyperfocal distance is for your lens/aperture setting, compose the scene and manually focus to that distance. It is very strange to see a lot of what you want in focus is actually out of focus when you press the shutter button. However, if you have the correct settings, the image will turn out the way you wanted. Here is a website that I found that gives you a lot of options for determining hyperfocal distance. I printed and laminated a card with my two specific lenses and their settings and carry it in my camera bag. Hope this helps.

http://www.dofmaster.com/charts.html

[bnnrcn]

Hi Russel. As far as I know 16mm with a crop sensor equals 16x1.6 = 25.6 with a full frame. So, although the focus distance is the same, the focal lengths are not . That's why you get different HDs

Hi, Many thanks for ALL the views.
One of the things that I cannot really get the head round is that if you have a full frame camera and set for example 16mm on the lens and the guy or girl opposite has a Canon 1.6 crop with a 10-22mm lens that will give 16mm what is the or why is there a differance on a HD chart or DOFMaster even, as the focus distance /object would be the same distance away from the sensor?
Russ

[xpatUSA]

Russel, I suspect in your image that your point of focus was actually on the rocks and not set at hyperfocal distance. I have tried this technique on occasion and found it a bit awkward. You will have to turn off AF or set your lens to manual focus. Determine what the hyperfocal distance is for your lens/aperture setting, compose the scene and manually focus to that distance. It is very strange to see a lot of what you want in focus is actually out of focus when you press the shutter button. However, if you have the correct settings, the image will turn out the way you wanted. Here is a website that I found that gives you a lot of options for determining hyperfocal distance. I printed and laminated a card with my two specific lenses and their settings and carry it in my camera bag. Hope this helps.

http://www.dofmaster.com/charts.html

Very good advice. My copy tells me that 'Sh' for f/8 is 15 ft for 30mm and 40ft for 50mm. Of course, if the image in the OP was cropped then estimating the distance of the near rock becomes more challenging . .

[BrianA61]

Russel, here is one of my photos where I used hyperfocal distance and not using the flowers as the POF. The details: 24-105 lens set at 73mm, f/22. According to my chart, hyperfocal distance is approx 22 feet. I was standing about 8-10ft behind the flowers and set focus on a guestimated 10ft beyond the flowers. Through my viewfinder, the flowers were completely out of focus. I took the shot and this was the result. I would recommend that if you are going to shoot with this technique, take multiple exposures with slightly different focus settings. In the field, you may not have time to accurately judge the distance of your focal point.

[xpatUSA]

Russel, here is one of my photos where I used hyperfocal distance and not using the flowers as the POF. The details: 24-105 lens set at 73mm, f/22. According to my chart, hyperfocal distance is approx 22 feet.

Here is a another example for you Russell, which I posted in a similar discussion over on DPR:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/54638096

It was my first-ever hyper-focal shot, a quick snap of my street for somebody there.

[Inkanyezi]

I went down to the shore rather late today to try getting more into focus, but my 17 mm Tamron is not the sharpest, which can be seen rather well in the distance. Anyway, tilt resolves the problem of getting nearby objects sharp at the same time as those more far away. This was taken at f/5,6.



I also tried a longer exposure to make "silky water". I did it at f/32, and it did not enhance sharpness at distant objects.

[JR1]

http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/20...y-cheat-sheet/

[PhotomanJohn]

Hi, Many thanks for ALL the views.
One of the things that I cannot really get the head round is that if you have a full frame camera and set for example 16mm on the lens and the guy or girl opposite has a Canon 1.6 crop with a 10-22mm lens that will give 16mm what is the or why is there a differance on a HD chart or DOFMaster even, as the focus distance /object would be the same distance away from the sensor?
Russ

Russell - The reason for the differences in DOF from FF to crop is that the tables assume that the subject fills the same percentage of the sensor area. If I understand your specific question (a FF and crop cameras with same focal length lenses standing next to each other) a subject will fill more of the sensor frame on the crop camera than the FF camera because the image size will be the same. If one makes the same size print of the subject from both cameras (FF image requiring more cropping) the apparent depth of field will be the same.

If hope this short answer helps.

John

[Inkanyezi]

Or put another way; the circle of confusion that is acceptable, acceptable unsharpness, depends on the size of the sensor. With a smaller sensor, a smaller circle of confusion is accepted. In formulae, the acceptable circle of confusion has a relation to the format diagonal.

[inkista]

I was standing about 8-10ft behind the flowers and set focus on a guestimated 10ft beyond the flowers. Through my viewfinder, the flowers were completely out of focus. ...

However, had you pressed the DoF preview button, they would have been in focus. But possibly too dark to tell they were in focus.

Russel, hyperfocal distance is a useful tool if you have a lens that lets you accurately scale focus (or even better has a DoF scale), or if you're good at guesstimating distances, but I'd also suggest learning to use your DoF preview button if you have one. If you're shooting Canon, you have one. If you're on a Nikon D3x00 or D5x00, however, you don't.

[BrianA61]

However, had you pressed the DoF preview button, they would have been in focus. But possibly too dark to tell they were in focus.

Russel, hyperfocal distance is a useful tool if you have a lens that lets you accurately scale focus (or even better has a DoF scale), or if you're good at guesstimating differences, but I'd also suggest learning to use your DoF preview button if you have one. If you're shooting Canon, you have one. If you're on a Nikon D3x00 or D5x00, however, you don't.

Yes, I don't usually like using the DOF button on my camera mainly due to the fact that the scene is usually too dark to get a good feel of what is in and out of focus.

[Polar01]

Why not use live view, hit the mag+ button to check the sharpness of the image, with it you can check the foreground, middle, and background. Just remember to turn off auto-focus.

Cheers: Allan

[TareqPhoto]

Just i hope when the weather will get better here in our area then i will go out and test my TS lenses for that hyperfocal distances, then it will help me to understand another lenses too, but i want to have more fun using TS over another lenses for landscapes or architecture.