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Landscape Focusing

W

wrazoo

I am a longtime Olympus film camera. I just purchased my first digital camera, the EVOLT E-510. I used to focus my landscape pictures by moving the infinity mark to the F-stop I was using to get most of the shot in focus. With my new digital camera, I don't have that capability. Does anyone know how to accomplish the same thing with a digital lens?
 
Hi David,

I think this is a problem with auto focus lenses, particularly zooms, that they don't have depth of field scales.

May be there is a dof preview button that you can press to assess depth of field and then adjust the focus but it sounds tricky.

Cheers,
John
 
> Using hyperfocal distance as a tool with non-manual lenses is just about impossible. Even those lenses that have distance scale have no depth of field scale. Nor do you have an aperture ring - well not on Oly's. DofF charts are available for all 4/3rds lenses. It's a poor substitute but that's about all you can get :)
 
>David, I know exactly how you feel. The lack of hyperfocal distance markings on modern AF lenses is, to me, the single biggest weakness of AF. The lenses have been "dumbed-down" for those who have never used hyperfocal distance (far too few!). I really miss it and have not found an adequate work around except to guesstimate the compensation by manually focussing 1/3 of the distance into the area I want sharp. I always take 2 or 3 shots with minor shifts in the focussing just to be sure. The nice thing with digital is that I'm not paying for those extra shots. Still, I'd rather have hyperfocal distance markings back on my lenses. Check out: http://www.dofmaster.com/hyperfocal.html and other pages found using Google. --Terry
 
This has been a tremendously educational link for me. However, is this more pertinent to SLR use only? Can anyone tell me whether when using small sensor Point and Shoots, given their inherently large depth of field, less care need be taken to find the Hyperfocal Distance - because essentially pointing and clicking will more likely than not give a uniformly pretty sharp picture? Or have I confused concepts?
 
Terry McDonald (Luxborealis) wrote on July 16:

' 2007 - 7:51 am,'
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link Terry. I'm still trying to figure the best way to use this
"auto everything" camera in manual mode to have more control. I can
control the shutter speed and F-stop but was having problems with the
focus. It seems as though they market to the snapshot market which is
probably most of America, and they probably take snapshots with their
cell phones anyway. The one thing I do like about digital camera's is the
ability to control the white balance. Dave
 
> Yes, I believe this thread is mainly aimed at DSLR users. But you are correct that compacts with small sensors have innate DofF so by inference hyperfocal focusing is much less critical. Trying to get some 'bokeh' or blurry background is more of a problem than getting everything in focus. And please, before I get pilloried, I know bokeh is not the correct terminology but it is usually taken to mean the effect of out of focus background. (Some forums are *so* pedantic :)
 
John, Thanks you for that. Just so you know, I'm particularly good at shots with lots of fokeh, where the foreground is blurred
happy.gif
 
> Fokeh, eh! That's a good one Larry; made me smile. I must get my cameras serviced as I get this too. Cheers.
 
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