From: "Tanya & Russell Mayer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[skipped]
> though. hehe)... Anyways, at a BBQ on Friday night, a woman and I were
> talking about photography and she claimed that she had this friend who was
> an "expert" on landscape photography, which I basically know ZILCH about.
> She claimed that his number one tip was to shoot EVERYTHING in landscape
> photography at f22 to ensure maximum depth of field. Ok, so here is my
> question, (and please forgive me if I am wwaaaaay off track here), but
when
> you are shooting, say a lake, or a beach scene at 6.30 at night and you
need
> more light, doesn't it make sense to shoot as wide open as possible? The
[skipped]
Horrors!!!
A small aperture like f/22 will give great depth of field but will reduce
the sharpness of your photos because the light diffracting around your
aperture blades will become significant. Most lenses are sharpest at f/8
which generally good for most landscapes by most folks. With a 50 mm lens at
f/22, everything from about 11 ft to infinity, but not be as sharp as the
lens can be. If this much DOF is necessary, better to set the stop at f/16
and the focus at about 40 feet. Then everything from about 12 feet to
infinity will be within the lenses DOF and reasonably focused. The entire
photo will be sharper. If you have a manual lens, it will have a DOF scale
on the lens to aid you with this. In looking back through my photos, most of
the "landscapes" were shot at f/8 or f/5.6. Look at the last PUG with the
theme "'scapes":
http://pug.komkon.org/00octo/index.html
They're all great, but look at Ann Sanfedele's photo taken at f5.6 or f.8.
Isn't it great! Actually, they're all great, but this one had the exposure
recorded.
Tell your friend to check out the PUG and visit the previous galleries. Once
in a while, folks record their settings.
Regards,
Bob...
Give blood. Play hockey.
-
This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe,
go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to
visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
