Tips on hyperfocal distance focusing (by photographer Chris Weston)

In this edition of Essential Field Techniques, wildlife photographer Chris Weston gives tips on hyperfocal distance focusing.
If you are interested in joining Chris Weston on one of his wildlife photography workshops, visit http://www.chrisweston.uk.com/workshops.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Hyperfocal
• distance
• focus
• focusing
• photography
• photographer
• tips
• workshops
• camera

[cwphotoworkshops]

Hi sharagim1 - thanks for your message. Yes, that lens is a good starting point for landscape photography. And the hyperfocal distance focussing technique will work with any focal length lens.

[handsome2302]

thanks a lot for the info

[MainVuper]

@sylvainnaessens

depends if your camera is fullframe or aps-c.

[mplayer98]

get a view camera, n00b

[pjos111]

Really great video cheers! I have a question.

Your subject was 6 feet away and when you looked at the chart it said that your camera would be in focus from 2` 6.5". Is this measurement from the camera of from your object towards the camera?

Paul

[Pogunsavat]

Thanks for this video, Chris but I'm still not sure about hyperfocal distance. Could you show an example using a Nikon 14-24mm lens. BTW, where could I download the chart you were using in this vdo? Thanks again

[pettermath]

is there a chart for all the different leses or does one chart fit them all??

petter

[sylvainnaessens]

sorry but here the hyperfocale isn't 6 feets but 2 feet 11. And if you change your focus to 2 feets 11, you ll win 1/3 of focus distance front of the subject no?

[SwitchRich]

The advice about ignoring the approach of focusing 1/3 of the way into the scene is sound. It's also worth remembering that the 1/3 rule only applies at small focal lengths. For most focal lengths the depth of field split is roughly 50-50.

[SwitchRich]

I'm very dubious about the advice with respect to the depth of field preview button. If you focus on the nearest point of sharpness with the depth of field preview button depressed you could lead to too distant objects being out of focus. The point is to correctly assign depth of field to both the foreground and background and not to focus on the closest possible point.

[Jez2008UK]

Careful with Hyperfocal Distance focussing.

It's not that you'll get 'sharpness' at 3ft to infinity but ACCEPTABLE sharpness. Look up the term Hyperfocal Distance on Wikipedia.

This is important because until VERY recently I was making this mistake as well.

Sharpness does taper off in both directions with Hyperfocal distance focussing, it's a gradual thing.

So, if your subject of importance is actually at 3ft, focusing at 6ft will render the 3ft subject slightly less in focus.