Hyperfocal distance.

Sounds complex, but its not!

It is, however a really important concept in most forms of writing or drawing with light. Hyperfocal distance is the distance from the lens to the focal point, that is in focus, and the distance beyond the focal point, that is in focus.

If I am making a portrait and I use a very wide aperture, and focus on the clients eye, at f1.8, their pupil will be in focus, but their eye lashes won’t. There will be times when this effect is desirable, and times when it is not. As lens construction and engineering has improved, I am much more inclined to buy a lens with a max aperture of f4, and then shoot at f8, to get as much of the clients face in focus, as I can, whilst still getting a pleasing bit of bokeh behind.

In a landscape, its much more likely that we will want a lot of the image in focus. If we focus on a point near to us, say just a few meters away, at f4. A meter towards us from the focal point, and a meter beyond, will be in focus. If we were to set f8, then focus 10-15 meters away. Most of the scene between us and the focal point will be in focus, and beyond the focal, almost everything to infinity will be in focus. This is ideal for the landscape shots that I like.

Clearly therefore, we must be mindful of the actual aperture we are using, and the distance between us and the subject matter, or focal point. For example photographing a mountain scene, the focal point will far enough away, so that everything that we can see in the image, will be in focus. However, for a flower, in the foreground, most of the background will be out of focus.

In the first photo, I have focused on the scallop shells, which were about 50m away. The fountain in the very near foreground, is bokehed out. In the second image, taken from above the scallop shells looking back at the fountain, I have focused in the middle distance, everything in the scene appears in focus – result!

These images were taken in the palace gardens at Versailles