Jim I googled it, and see 2 things I did incorrectly. 1st is my f-stop at 5.6, should have been at least 8 if not more, as this was taken at 16mm 1/250 of a second so I really could have stopped down quite a bit more if I said that correctly. Also this was handheld...I need to use my tripod, but was in a hurry with hubby & dogs in truck hahaha. Then I did focus on infinity, and not like at the halfway point which if I read the article correctly....would have made a huge difference. Awesome and thank you! Love learning and can't wait to try it...
Hey Darcy, glad you googled it!
A couple of quick points.
f8 is often the sharpest, but the best combination on sharpness and amount of Depth of Field I almost always shoot at f13 on my lenses. Of course each lens should be tested individually, but for me, f13 gives me the best combination of sharpness and DOF.
With Hyperfocal Distance, you want to focus 1/3rd of the distance into the scene before you. Hyperfocal Distance basically states that at any given point of focus, that what's in focus is then split with 1/3 of it in front of the focus point and 2/3rds of it behind. For practical purposes I often just try to focus on something about 20 feet away. I know that's not totally 1/3rd, but it works usually for me. Now that you know about it, you can play with it and try it out.
Last, never ever ever focus at infinity....
Infinity is not what you are probably thinking. There was a time where Infinity actually worked but that was back in the day with manual focus lenses. With any lens that Autofocuses, it will not have a true infinity. The reason for that is because of how lenses autofocus, and I won't go into the details, but enough to say simply, you should never use Infinity. Some people say they use infinity when shooting the stars at night, and if it works for those people, great. But I don't use infinity even at night.
There is a lot to learn, taking good photographs with a good camera, is not as simple as just pointing and shooting, which in todays age is the common misconception. So I am glad to hear that you have a desire to learn and grow!
Jim
