- Tips, Tools, and Techniques to Get the Best Landscapes and Cityscapes
- Poring Over the Picture
- Sharp and In Focus: Using Tripods
- Selecting the Proper ISO
- Using Noise Reduction
- Selecting a White Balance
- Using the Landscape Creative Style
- Shooting Beautiful Black-and-White Landscapes
- Golden Light
- Shooting Compelling Sunrises and Sunsets
- Making Water Fluid
- Composing Landscapes and Streetscapes
- Where to Focus
- Easier Focusing
- Using Manual Focus Assist
- Using DMF Focus Mode
- Expand Your Range
- Shooting Panoramas
- Look for the Unexpected
- Chapter 8 Assignments
Chapter 8 Assignments
We’ve covered a lot of ground in this chapter, so it’s definitely time to put this knowledge to work in order to get familiar with these new camera settings and techniques.
Comparing depth of field: Wide-angle vs. telephoto
Practice focusing at the hyper focal distance of your lens to maximize the depth of field. If you have a zoom lens, try using its longest length. Compose your image and find an object to focus on. Set your aperture to f/22 and take a photo.
Now do the same thing with the zoom lens at its widest focal length. Use the same aperture and focus point.
Review the images and compare the depth of field when using a wide-angle focal length as opposed to a telephoto focal length. Try this again with a large aperture as well.
Applying hyper focal distance to your landscapes
Pick a scene that has objects that are near the camera position as well as something that is clearly defined in the background. Try using a wide to medium-wide focal length for this (24–35mm). Use a small aperture and focus on the object in the foreground; then recompose and take a shot. Without moving the camera position, use the object in the background as your point of focus and take another shot. Finally, find a point that is one-third of the way into the frame from near to far and use that as the focus point. Compare all of the images to see which method delivered the greatest range of depth of field.
Using the rule-of-thirds grid guide
Using the rule-of-thirds grid, practice shooting while placing your main subject in one of the intersecting line locations. Then take some comparison shots with the same subject in the middle of the frame.
Share your results with the book’s Flickr group!
Join the group here: flickr.com/groups/sonya7-a7rfromsnapshotstogreatshots