Originally posted by leekil I'm having trouble understanding exactly what you are talking about with your three sample images. They are a bit low-res for the amount of detail in the images, so everything comes up a bit pixelly, and it's hard for me to tell exactly what is in focus -- not that much looks out of focus. But looking at your EXIF, if you're using apertures like 14 and 11, then basically isn't practically *everything* in focus? I'm not seeing the "plane of focus" I was expecting; in the first one, maybe the line of trees and everything in front of it is in focus, but the far background is not? In the second one, similar, where everything up to the trees past the fence is in focus? In the third, presumably the plane of tree is in focus, but the pixellation makes it hard to tell. If you used f11 or 14 on the 43, I would think you could get the same effect as the rest two photos, but maybe you would have to focus on a slightly different spot?
Your second one I particularly like, but that isn't because of the focus, it's because of the moody, misty look.
Hi Lee, I only had the low res ones to hand, sorry.
Yes they are at f11, I tend to use between f8 and f11 for these types of landscapes, dropping to wider apertures if I want to emphasise the planes - these were not especially good examples of this. However, taking 1 and 2, when printed large, both with macro lenses, the trees on the edges are sharp. The distant path in the first is blurring as it recedes. In the third the background is blurring. Both have been focused at a mid-near point, to let the distance go a little. So my thoughts are that the 43, would naturally produce the same back to front sharpness in the centre, but the edges would also be a little blurred, because it seems to be set-up to give emphasise to a central subject. Thus the effects of a plane of slightly out-of-focus, moving to pin sharp across the frame, followed by planes becoming blurred, would not be possibly with the 43, at least to the same extent as the macro(s).
I need to experiment some more in a few days time, particularly looking at the edges and the transitions.
Thanks for keeping interested.