Originally posted by daacon
While I like the photo I am wondering how do you get everthing in focus for night photography? Should I crop more of the river ?
Tamron 28-75 - 33mm - f4 - ISO 400 - 2.5s
Hi Dave,
What matters is the focal length and the aperture, nothing else. You can look up the rough distances on a hyperfocal distance chart.
In this case (based on your focal length and aperture), everything would be in focus from roughly 25-30 feet and beyond. Longer focal lengths need higher apertures to keep the majority of the image in focus. For example, sports shooters at night don't often go above F4 or F5.6 because of the shutter speed vs. higher ISO noise issues. The bonus is that they isolate the subject better with a 300-400mm lens. That's why the ultra wide angle lenses are so good for landscape photography, since they have a higher DOF due to a shorter focal length... but sometimes you want to isolate a foreground object with a soft OOF mountain ridge in the background, so it requires a different focal length lens.
Just do a Google Search for "DOF Calculator" and that will get you started...
DOFMaster.com has an OK chart, but this will get you started
"Find the lens' focal length on the horizontal axis. Read up to the f-number to find the hyperfocal distance at that f-number. For example, the arrows on the chart above illustrate how to read the hyperfocal distance for a 50mm lens set to f/16."
The above doesn't cover any focal lengths above 100mm, but I often shoot isolated shorelines with 115-135mm. Since it's so far away (150 + feet), Hyperfocal distance doesn't really matter very much! This information is critical for landscape photography, and it's something I cover in a general sense with the class I teach. It can quickly becoming confusing for a newcomer! I keep a more basic version in my bag as a reference.
Let me know if this is not clear, and I'll do my best to explain.
It's nice to see winter in Canada again, BTW... thanks for posting...
Regards,
Marc