Originally posted by Madaboutpix You sure love your exact numbers, and you're entitled to them. In fact, no one argues that numbers wouldn't matter in photography.
However, from a compositional standpoint, many landscape shots done with wide- and ultra-wideangle lenses benefit from including foreground interest, and those objects will be considerably closer than your 100 metres.
As for the concept of hyperfocal distance, I've grown a little doubtful about its ultimate usefulness in digital photography since I read this (as far as I can tell) pretty well-reasoned article:
Why Hyperfocal Distance Charts Are Wrong
Also, you might be a little too dismissive about focus stacking with a small number of exposures in landscape photography. I recall several landscape photographers, including our Veteran Pentaxian Mike Orea (
mikeSF - View Profile - PentaxForums.com), who seem to be getting great results this way, though I can't attest he is using a KP.
That article uses a strawman argument. The hyperfocal distance is not wrong but it is often misunderstood and misapplied at two levels.
First, each photographer has their own definition of "acceptable sharpness" which they might have based on either pixel-peeping or overall impressions of the image on a certain print size or screen size. Hyperfocal distance depends on the photographer's chosen value for the CoC (circle of confusion) which varies with camera resolution (including the use of pixel shift) and the photographer's subjective tastes for sharpness. If a photographer uses a hyperfocal distance chart but feels like the ends of the range are too soft, then they just need to recompute the chart with a smaller CoC. And if the photographer thinks the chart is too conservative, then they should recompute it with a larger CoC.
Second, the chart only tells you what will be in focus (not what
should be in focus or that you should always use hyperfocal distance focusing). It's up to the photographer to determine if the hyperfocal distance range works with the scene or whether: 1) they need a narrower aperture and hyperfocal distance to bring the foreground into focus; 2) they need a wider aperture to intentionally throw the foreground out of focus; 3) they need to use focus stacking (which actually uses the same hyperfocal distance math to estimate a good focus stack); or 4) they need to crop or reframe the shot to remove problematic foreground matter.
It's certainly true that many wide-angle landscape compositions have everything from a few feet away to infinity in the frame. But rather than waste time with trial-and-error combinations of aperture and lens distance settings hoping to get everything in focus, a hyperfocal distance chart calculated for the photographer's preferred CoC tells them exactly what they need to use to get shot (or if the shot is impossible with an acceptable aperture).
One general issue with all the "rules" of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO for photography is that they are merely starting points or guidelines, not black-and-white edicts. Each photographer needs to test how the rule works for them. Any time a photographer is learning a new technique like hyperfocal distance, the first step is to try it with a bit of bracketing and a bit more scrutiny to see if the rule needs a bit of tweaking. Often they will learn that they need to adjust the rule by a stop or two in some direction but that they can still use the rule.