A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to spend a long weekend in Dartmoor. We ended up visiting Wistman's Wood for much of the first afternoon, which was so captivating we would have definitely spent the whole day there had the heavens not opened. It was our main reason for going and it definitely did not disappoint; there is genuinely something ethereal about that location!
Before the weather turned, we also managed to get up to a couple of tors and visit some of the wonderful stone rows that Dartmoor is (apparently) famous for. I come from the Lake District, so standing stones and Bronze Age circles are nothing new to me, but I have never seen anything quite like the stone rows of Dartmoor. Combined with their incredibly curated streams, the rows create a fantastical landscape that I really wasn't expecting. I will definitely be back, during better weather and with more time.
However, the combination of rows and stones also offered a great opportunity for creating leading lines in landscape photographs. I'll admit to spending far too long waiting for specific lighting conditions, wind directions etc. but I also had a lot of fun. The odd part was, I really struggled to get my shots in focus. To try and foreshorten the shots a little bit, hopefully creating a feeling of being 'pulled' into the photo, I was shooting landscapes using zoom lenses, which is not a technique I've tried before. Part of the reason I've steered clear of this setup is that zoom lenses tend to have tighter depths of field, making it harder to get the full shot in focus. Still, with scenes of prehistoric landmarks marching off to distant, cloud-shaded peat fells, I wanted to capture the sense of vastness that seemed to be all around me.
Logically, I know that the next step is to reduce the size of my aperture. But what I found was, on a windy day without a stable tripod, that at the apertures needed for full focus I was losing clarity. I was also struggling to get the foreground and distant background in focus, no matter the exposure I went for. I happened to notice that focusing on a particular stone, about a third of the way into my composition, was giving me much better results. I'll admit, at the time I just went with it, though it felt counter intuitive. Having come back and done some research, it turns out my intuitions were just wrong.
Hyperfocal distance. It sounds like something out of Star Wars, doesn't it? In reality, however, it may finally be the answer to one of my biggest 'errors' when taking landscape photographs. I won't go into a huge amount of detail in this article about the whys and hows of hyperfocal distance (though if that's what you're after, there's a reading list at the end) but just coming to understand it a little better has been enlightening.
In brief, the hyperfocal distance of your lens/camera/setup is the point within your frame that allows for the broadest depth-of-field when in focus. That sounds a little odd, so to understand first realise this: it is impossible to get an image completely focused in one shot. No matter how good the lens, how wide the focal range, how small the aperture you will always have some areas out of focus. But, the level of "out of focus" can be completely imperceptible, so a lot of photographs appear to be in focus. These shots are using their hyperfocal distance; the actual, truly focused region will be at the precise point in the frame that enables 99% of what's left to be only slightly out of focus. Our brains fill in the rest.
Now, that isn't something I've ever come across before and it's not something I've specifically learned, but it does seem completely intuitive to me. My problem is that the solution I've been using for years fails to understand the actual cause of the issue. I think I have always assumed that focus works by focusing from me to wherever I set the focal point. Changing the aperture, I believed, then changed the focal grading from that point outwards, so a large aperture has a steep gradient and clear blurring/bokeh, whilst a small aperture produces a very shallow gradient where only the very closest extremes are noticeably fuzzy. In a way, I was right, but the effect is far more centred on the focal point then I had realised. It's not a line in the image, in front of which everything is focused, but more a circle or ellipse, around which the focus slowly worsens in a semi-linear manner.
What that means is that focusing on the distant horizon, effectively to infinity, which has always been my go-to technique, will result in an out-of-focus foreground. Seems obvious, right? But it will also reduce focus in the mid-ground. Conversely, focus near to the camera and the horizon becomes blurred. The trick, as I had accidentally stumbled upon, is to focus somewhere in between the two, effectively allowing your focal circle the widest diameter possible.
Fantastic, right? I just need to focus at the mid point of the frame and everything will slot into place! Well... no, not exactly. Or at least, not easily. Drawing a line between yourself and the horizon and estimating the mid-point isn't going to give you the hyperfocal distance. Why? Well, that's because the camera doesn't "see" in three dimensions, instead it effectively "sees" in 2-D. Especially with zoom lenses, that foreshortening of the landscape matters, moving the hyperfocal distance towards you. It seems a good rule of thumb is to focus somewhere around the one third mark, but in reality that will be wrong more than it is right. The internet is full of suggested methods to work out your hyperfocal distance, some easier than others, but as of yet I haven't actually tried any of them out.
But it won't be too long until I do. We're heading to the Outer Hebrides in the next few weeks and you can be sure that I will be taking a lot of landscape shots whilst we're there. Learning about hyperfocal distance (as well as other factors that can result in reduced clarity) has really lit a spark in my mind. I'm itching to get out and try some of this theory in the field; it's a nice feeling, one I haven't had for a while (with photography, at least). Hopefully, next time I report back, it will be to say that I've finally answered one of my longest standing conundrums with landscape shots: how to focus, well, everywhere.
Whilst researching the topic I came across a whole lot of really informative and interesting articles around the web. Some are specifically about hyperfocal distance, but some are more focused on lens sharpness or landscape techniques. Hopefully, combined, they will form a good bed of information to start practicing with.
Hyperfocal Distance Explained - PhotographyLife
How to Choose the Sharpest Aperture - PhotographyLife
What is the Sharpest Aperture on a Lens - Improve Photography
Panoramic Photography Tutorial - PhotographyLife
How to Calculate the Sharpest Aperture of Any Lens - Envatotuts
