Pictures, most often, a little on the blurry side

[David Hughes]

Hi,

A simple way of finding out how to get what you want is to expose at, say, f/8 and take three shots with the infinity mark at f/11 then f/8 and finally at f/5.6

The alternative is to wonder why we think we can get to infinity in a landscape when the background in focus won't be anything like an infinite distance away, even the moon isn't. And murk in the atmosphere means there's little to be seen at infinity. So why not use a setting short of infinity for the extreme mark? The edge of the infinity mark, f'instance or halfway between it and the next distance marked on the scale...

Have fun experimenting and don't forget the notebook.

Regards, David

 

[Captain Kidd]

Thanks David, thats a good way of testing, ill certainly try that.

 

[Spavinaw]

Radical Solution: Fight the laws of physics and you lose, use the laws of physics and you win. Get an SLR with a tilt lens and use the scheimphlug principal. Take it or leave it.

 

[Richard G]

The piece by Merklinger that Richard G mentioned was what I also referred to earlier. also excellent application in the image you posted, Richard G!
One more thought on the subject: At times, opening up the aperture can also be a solution for these situations where dof isn't quite sufficient for the whole scene. Not what you want to hear I think. But especially small detail can look less silly if it's more than just very slightly defocused.

Sorry I missed your earlier reference to infinity focus.

That Gruyaert photograph of the cyclists, the first of his linked, the focus is on the spirals of the hay. The distance is slightly blurred, but it's forest foliage only. I still wouldn't call his approach there hyperfocal distance focussing, nor is it infinity focussing. He picked something to be sharp, losing half of his depth of field to the air and fields behind the hay. The physics of all this belies the psychology. By having the central hay sharp and guy with the binoculars on top pretty sharp too he gets the whole thing to work. The foreground figures look sharp enough, especially as they are less important than the cyclists.

 

[michaelwj]

Captain, in your cow example, I would focus on the nearest cow at 2.5m, and close the aperture to cover the background. My reasoning is the if the near cow will be the focus then it should be sharp. The far distance will be not quite sharp, but then we are used to seeing the far distance a bit blurry, it looks natural. But if the sharpest point is the tail of the cow not its eyes, it would just look weird. Sometimes hyperfocal can work, but other times it's best just to focus on the main subject. If there is no main subject, then what is the photo about? The answer will dictate where you focus.
On the other hand, if the near cow was 0.5m away and on the edge of the frame, I might focus farther into the scene and have the near cow as an out of focus frame for the image. Webb and others do this a lot.

 

[tunalegs]

While on the subject, these examples, do you think the photographers took them using hyperfocal settings, or actually focused on a particular part of the photo, would that not just give the same result?

Harry Gruyaert
https://www.magnumphotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/cortex/nn11428270-overlay.jpg
Harry Gruyaert
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d1/d6/88/d1d688bccccac8c564cbbe63e02aaa7a.jpg
Gueorgui Pinkhassov
https://i1.wp.com/www.pavelkosenko.com/lj/0101/018.jpg
David Alan Harvey
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/49/e2/58/49e258cb36fca290f1329e14fa69282e.jpg

Thanks

None of these images appear to be focused using the hyperfocal distance, indeed none of them appear to have the distant background in focus when one looks closely.

One may often get away with having the distance background in soft focus without most even noticing it, because we often don't see extremely distance views in discernible detail. I think one can also often get away with having extreme foreground objects out of focus, as is the case in several photos you've posted in this thread.

Using an example of my own, in the photo below the whole image at first glance appears to be sharp, because all the subjects of interest (and well everything big) is actually sharp. But if you look closer for a second, the most distant parts of the photo are not sharp.


Tourists by Berang Berang, on Flickr

As in many of the photos you've posted it's more the composition which gives the impression of total focus than every distance actually being in focus.

It may also be appropriate to think about relative sharpness, at f11 diffraction will begin to contribute a slight softening over the whole frame, which by slightly reducing the sharpness of what distances otherwise would be in sharpest focus also has the effect of "leveling" the relative sharpness of near vs. far. Basically the sharp parts become less sharp so the difference between them and out of focus areas becomes less noticeable.

Further along that line, the smaller the image the sharper the whole thing will look. I suspect that some of the examples you've posted wouldn't appear nearly as uniformly sharp if the file sizes were larger.

 

[johnnyrod]

Some great advice there, and as an amateur who is still learning the basics, it makes interesting reading. I can only echo some of the above that works for me:

Don't obsess over sharpness too much
Camera shake is easily done and can be hard to spot as the cause; always consider a tripod
Worry less about the background/distance being so sharp; focus a touch closer than the "ideal" spot your DoF scale says, as you always have more DoF behind than in front anyway (so is more forgiving)
Add a stop to what the DoF scale says you need
Do experiment, not only with the technicalities, but try a reduced DoF (e.g. f5.6) where you would normally want hyperfocal, focus on the subject, and just see how it turns out

 

[Captain Kidd]

Thanks for these, I was away for a few days, in Paris in fact so got to visit the henri cartier bresson foundation (an exhibition on his book the decisive moment) and a Harold Feinstein exhibition at another gallery, feeling inspired and as grateful as always for the comments, Thanks again