Best Aperture for Landscape Using Canon Lenses

[dwdallam]

Ray,

You are correct. There is no way to get an exact distance in the field in some instances. Bracket with distance.

I do get the job done, but usually with the aid of a very fancy gadget ... the camera   .
This is precisely the point I am making. Distance markings on lenses are often useless. With a cropped format camera and 100mm lens at f11, using a CoC of 0.02mm, the hyperfocal distance is slightly less than 50m, actually 44.3m. Focussing on the 44m mark in the scene would give me an acceptably sharp image from 22m to infinity. If I get this slightly wrong and focus on a point say 60m away, then the foreground at 22m is likely to be slightly fuzzy.

If I'm using a 200mm lens at f11, the distances are greater and any markings on the lens even more useless. I'd have to focus on a point 177m away to get everything sharp from 88m to infinity.

Of course, if I'm using a wide-angle lens, say 24mm, there's much more latitude. Focussing on something as close as 2.5 metres gives a sharp result from about 4ft to infinity. If I get that slightly wrong and focus on a point 3 metres away, I've changed the nearest 'acceptably sharp' point by just a few inches, which is why I do not bother using the tilt on my TS-E 24mm for big picture landscapes.
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[Ray]

Ray,

You are correct. There is no way to get an exact distance in the field in some instances. Bracket with distance.
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Yes. Bracketing is easy with digital cameras. I bracket because I'm not exactly sure about the best exposure for ETTR. I bracket again at perhaps f11, f16 and f22 because I want maximum DoF and I want to examine the trade-off between maximum resolution at the point of focus compared with resolution at the extremities of the DoF range. I bracket a third time because I'm not sure of the best point in the scene to focus on, in order to maximize DoF. And maybe it is sometimes useful to bracket at different ISO settings, just to be sure I am using an adequate shutter speed to freeze movement of the subject.

According to my maths, that's at least 27 shots. Now that's fine. Pressing that shutter button doesn't cost anything, except the additional time I have to spend later sitting at the computer. I'm not sure I want to do that. When I return from a shooting trip I usually have about 5,000 shots to process including a modest number of bracketed shots.

I feel that I need a personal assistant who is a whiz at using Photoshop, who enjoys sitting in front of a computer all day and who will work for nothing. I could then concentrate on on just taking photos   .

[dwdallam]

That's because you still need to know what you are doing or you do end up with 5, 000 shots. I use to do that also, and the images would go unprocessed for months just because it would take me eight hours a day to look through them all.

Now, when I shoot, say a sunset, I usually have about 30 images for a set up that takes around an hour. It's hard to be selective, but if you don't, it just takes too much time to go through them.

Yes. Bracketing is easy with digital cameras. I bracket because I'm not exactly sure about the best exposure for ETTR. I bracket again at perhaps f11, f16 and f22 because I want maximum DoF and I want to examine the trade-off between maximum resolution at the point of focus compared with resolution at the extremities of the DoF range. I bracket a third time because I'm not sure of the best point in the scene to focus on, in order to maximize DoF. And maybe it is sometimes useful to bracket at different ISO settings, just to be sure I am using an adequate shutter speed to freeze movement of the subject.

According to my maths, that's at least 27 shots. Now that's fine. Pressing that shutter button doesn't cost anything, except the additional time I have to spend later sitting at the computer. I'm not sure I want to do that. When I return from a shooting trip I usually have about 5,000 shots to process including a modest number of bracketed shots.

I feel that I need a personal assistant who is a whiz at using Photoshop, who enjoys sitting in front of a computer all day and who will work for nothing. I could then concentrate on on just taking photos   .
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[benInMA]

Perhaps if you're doing this it's best to invest in some older manual focus lenses.

When I looked at my lenses the other night the only one which even has any marks beyond 5m is my 300mm lens.  Honestly I don't think I've ever even tried to do a hyperfocal shot with that lens... it's largely pointless considering how hard it is to stabilize and how much it needs to be stopped down to get any depth of field.   The only landscape use I have for it is a telephoto shot at infinity of mountains, etc.. very far away.

All the other lenses I have I think only go out to 3m or so on the focus scale.  My memory fails me but I could have sworn the old mechanical lenses were much better in this respect.  It's not like autofocus is all that useful for this particular job.

[Ray]

Perhaps if you're doing this it's best to invest in some older manual focus lenses.

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No point in going backwards, Ben. It's not a major issue but something that might be addressed as technology advances. I'm actually surprised that we can't get a read-out of focussing distance in the viewfinder. Some stitching programs require distance to subject information. As I recall when I trialled the DXO lens correction software, it needed a distance to subject to do a thorough job, but EXIF doesn't seem to carry such information.

Perhaps a future camera will have an optional autofocus feature which searches for the hyperfocal distance, whatever the focal length. If you know you want the horizon (or infinity) sharp, there's no point in focussing at infinity if you are also striving to get maximum DoF.

[Gregory]

I haven't seen any evidence to point to the various Canon (And Nikon has one too) Tilt/Shift lenses not getting the job done.
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could someone please direct me to a forum/topic or site where I could learn about how to use tilt lenses to correct perspective or increase the dof?

[Ray]

could someone please direct me to a forum/topic or site where I could learn about how to use tilt lenses to correct perspective or increase the dof?
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There'll be lots of examples if you do a Google search. Basically it's the shift that corrects for perspective and the tilt that skews the plane of focus resulting in an 'apparent' increase in DoF. DoF actually remains the same, depending on f stop and distance to subject. However, the parts of the image that are in or out of focus will change. This can have unwanted consequences. For example, if you wanted to take a close-up of an erect person whilst keeping an interesting background sharp, out to infinity, you might find the person's feet were sharp but head and shoulders not sharp. It sometimes requires a bit of messing around to get a good result and the job is made more difficult with a small viewfinder.

But don't let me put you off. They certainly 'work'. I use mine mainly for easy stitching of close subjects with little parallax error (using the shift of course). You see, I'm attracted to easy solutions. Complex pano heads with various adjustments in relation to focal length and distance to the subject are too fussy for me, especially when I can only make a wild guess as to distance to subject. I'm not even sure if a dedicated pano head would be able to do as good a job as a shift lens for really close subjects, say 3 or 4 metres away.