Just write down your lens settings in your photography notebook - 85mm, f/16, 55’ - and now you know what your hyperfocal distance is! That “sweet spot” is your hyperfocal distance. But let’s say you fiddle around a bit with your focus and find a “sweet spot” at 55 feet away, with your 85mm lens set to f/16, that puts all the important elements of the shot in focus. If you focus on the tree - well, maybe that could work, or maybe the tree will be nice and sharp but the person and the clouds will both be out of focus. If you focus on the clouds, the person is blurry. If you focus on the person, the tree is out of focus. Here’s your problem: What lens do you use, at what aperture, set to what focal point, so that all three major elements - the person, the tree, and the clouds - are in focus and sharp enough? ![]() Let’s consider a pretty common scenario: You are taking a landscape photograph of a field on a sunny day, and you have a person in the foreground, a tree in the middle ground, and then some awesome swirly clouds in the deep background. If any of those terms are new to you, you may want to check out some of our other articles on those topics and then circle back to this one when you’re ready. ![]() Let’s dive into the mechanics of hyperfocal distance and see if we can’t bring some clarity to what can be a murky and confusing topic.įor the purposes of this article, we’re going to assume that you are familiar with the basics of technical photography, so you know about things like aperture, focal length, depth of field, and prime vs. Things start to get complicated when you try to narrow down that definition, and even more difficult when you start to get into the specifics of how to calculate the hyperfocal distance for various different lenses and shooting situations.
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