Wide Angle Lens and Landscape Photography (hyperfocal distance focusing)

[mike]

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"]<span style="font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;"]Hell Forum
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<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"]<span style="font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;"]I am looking to purchase a wide angle lens and am looking for some help and suggestions. The camera I am using is a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"]Canon 50D 1.6 crop and my primary use for the lens will be to shoot landscapes using hyperfocal distance in order to maximize the focus of everything in the picture. Zooms tend not to have a scale and to use hyperfocal focusing I would typically shoot at the widest focal length. The Canon options appear to be the EF 20mm, EF-S 10-22 mm, EF-S 17-55 or EF 17-40.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"](money is a factor so I am not looking at the 16-35) While I have reviewed the postings in the forum, I have found little about using these lenses with hyperfocal focusing. Any thoughts about these lenses and the above specifics would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[Mark Elberson]

I own the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 and I love it. The view @
10mm is phenomenal! On your 50D set the aperture to f/8 and the
Hyperfocaldistance will be 2.19ft. If you focus on anything
reasonably close to you and then recompose almost everything in the
frame will be sharp. Heck, even at f/3.5 the Hyperfocaldistance will
be just over 5 ft! The FoV and DoF are HUGE with this lens.


All of these calculations were done using DOFMaster with a Circleofconfusion of
0.019 mm. I am not sure if that Circleofconfusion is optimized for the 50D but it should be a good starting point.

[Alan]

If you focus on anything
reasonably close to you and then recompose almost everything in the
frame will be sharp.
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Perhaps, but not likely. While the 10-22 lens is very good, it's a lot to expect from this lens, that everything will, indeed, be in sharp focus (out to infinity). It's a big demand on this lens' optics. Don't be surprised to find out that the background is not as sharp as you thought it would be.

[Mark Elberson]

Perhaps, but not likely. While the 10-22 lens is very good, it's a lot to expect from this lens, that everything will, indeed, be in sharp focus (out to infinity). It's a big demand on this lens' optics. Don't be surprised to find out that the background is not as sharp as you thought it would be.

So are you arguing that this lens is not that sharp? That's not reallyrelevantwhen discussing hyperfocaldistance.

[Alan]

So are you arguing that this lens is not that sharp? That's not reallyrelevantwhen discussing hyperfocaldistance.
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You're right, it's not relevant.

[Daniel Browning]

Even if they did have more information printed on the lens barrel, it probably would not be accurate or conservative enough to achieve perfect hyperfocal distance. I suggest using live view for landscape photography: then you can check focus at 10X and be absolutely certain it's sharp.