Hyperfocal distance

[patrick_delaney]

<p>As a newcomer to Digital cameras how do I find the hyperfocal distance?</p>

[lornesunley]

<p>The same way you do with a film camera..... it's the lens, not the sensor, digital or analog optical sensors do not matter. You can use this tool to estimate it http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html</p>

 

[bill_tuthill]

I am surprised that despite all the useless features on cameras nowadays, such as color substitution and pet detection, few or no digital cameras offer hyperfocal setting. It would be easy for the camera to calculate from focal length and aperture.

[leighb]

<p>Modern lenses don't even have DoF scales (Nikon G-series for example).</p>

<p>In the modern digital world, out-of-focus images are the norm and considered acceptable.</p>

<p>The majority of images are taken with cell phones. That certainly raises our quality expectations, doesn't it?</p>

<p>- Leigh</p>

[lachaine]

<p>It's because the 35mm or digital equivalent form factor (and I include all the various sensor sizes in this) were never meant to be used as fine art view cameras. They are walking around cameras. The only real need for hyperfocal focusing in this context is for when you wanted to turn your expensive camera into a fixed focus one for fast shooting (such as in street photography).</p>

<p>Since autofocus pretty much eliminates that need, there's is no need for hyperfocal markings on lenses. Even Ansel Adams himself said somewhere that there might not be much advantage to using hyperfocal focusing for landscapes and such when using a 35mm camera because of the greater depth of field compared to larger cameras. It wouldn't get you much benefit over just using the usual where to focus rule of thumb. You can use it by calculating it, and the little Canon compact I had could be set to a hyperfocal using CHDK software, but what would be the point exactly?</p>

<p>In photography as in everything else, the ability to distinguish between theory and practice will save you much trouble.</p>

[leighb]

<blockquote>

<p>They are walking around cameras. The only real need for hyperfocal focusing in this context is for when you wanted to turn your expensive camera into a fixed focus one for fast shooting (such as in street photography).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think DoF scales and hyperfocal settings were used primarily by news photographers with Graphic 4x5 cameras and Rolleiflex TLRs.</p>

<p>It was quite common to set the focus on the Graphics using the DoF scale and the little arrow, based on the anticipated subject and composition, rather than trying to focus on the fly.</p>

<p>- Leigh</p>

 

[Mattman944]

<p>In the 80s when I used a manual focus 35mm SLR, I occasionally used the focus range lines on the aperture ring to determine the hyperfocal distance. I miss this feature and I hope they add a feature to easily set the hyperfocal distance with a DSLR. Maybe they will eventually. </p>

[bill_tuthill]

If autofocus is such a panacea, why do we see so many out of focus images? Hyperfocal distance on my small-sensor P&S is 29 meters maximum, and on my small-sensor Superzoom 295 meters, the length of 3.23 football fields! So hyperfocal setting could be useful tor taking pictures like this:

<p>

<img src=http://g4.img-dpreview.com/C08462D9F7D64F6680853106B328BECA.jpg>

[lachaine]

<p>I didn't say that autofocus is a panacea.</p>

<p>Hyperfocal focusing is by definition not that precise because you're not actually focusing on the subject. It's just a form of zone focusing. There's almost nothing you can achieve with it <strong>on a small format camera</strong> that can't be achieved better in other ways. It's like many other readings on the internet that sound good in theory.</p>

<p>I would bet that most focusing problems which are not actually a technical problem with the lens are operator error caused by poor use of the lens, inadequate understanding of what the camera's AF system is actually doing in whatever combination of servo and area mode it's in, reliance on multiple AF points that aren't in the right place for the subject and can't be moved there, or by lack of knowledge like the guy in another thread who insists that using an exposure of 1 second on a bunch of flowers is a good way to test his camera's focus accuracy.</p>

[bill_tuthill]

Perhaps Harold Merklinger is correct that infinity focus is always better than hyperfocal, but his examples are unconvincing to me. In the famous Placentia Newfoundland image with canon, for example, the image would look bad if anything with lots of detail, such as flowers, appeared in the foreground. Examples in his book are even less convincing.

 

http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/DOFR.html

[dg1]

<p>Ricoh digital cameras such as the GX series (GX, GX8, GX100, GX200) and the GRD all offer a hyperfocal zone focus mode called "Snap" mode. This is a carry over from the GR compact 35mm film cameras and, as with that camera, offered a solution to shutter and AF lag to speed up shooting. That mode is set at 2.5meters. I don't know what the exact focus range is but with the small sensor and tiny actual focal length of the lenses I don't think it's much of an issue. I've never done a comparison but I would guess the infinity focus would be difficult to distinguish from the hyperfocal setting in most street shooting situations, at least on a small sensor compact.<br>

Just about any digital compact that offers a manual focus function can be easily set up for this, especially if the camera has a memory that can call up a zoom position and focus point. I believe the new Nikon P7000 can do this and the old Pentax 750z could also. The Sony H-20 offers zone focus selections at 1, 3, and 7 meters as well as infinity, and if the smaller of the 2 available apertures is selected your good to go. <br>

I use zone focus on my Panasonic G1 with the manual focus OM and industar lenses I have and it's hard to beat the lens barrel markings for convenience. </p>

[kate_fitzgerald]

<p>I'm coming a bit late to this discussion, but I've been scanning the Web to see if anyone had created hyperfocal distance tables for Fuji's first three X-Pro1 lenses, and wasn't having much success. But I just found them here:<br>

<a href="http://camerau.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/fuji-x-pro1-journal-part-2-lens-hyperfocal-tables/">http://camerau.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/fuji-x-pro1-journal-part-2-lens-hyperfocal-tables/</a><br>

Maybe this will help my fellow X-Pro1 fans!<br>

Kate</p>