Yes, the hyper-focal distance can help you decide, but I usually just use a small enough aperture to achieve the desired DOF.


As you could see in your f/22 shot the buildings are now sharp. If you have plenty of light thats not a problem, but at twilight you will probably have to go with a little larger aperture like f/11 give or take a stop and focus about half way into the shot. If there is a strong foreground object (like the boat) anchoring your shot, pun intended, then you want to make sure that that is in focus, because that will obviously be more of a problem then an OOF distant background, since we are used to seeing closer objects in focus, unless of course you do the opposite for artistic reasons.


You will probably rarely require f/22, as it's often not necessary and the sweet spot of most lenses usually lies in the middle of the aperture range.


But it's still good to try all of the different setttings and then go home and look at the computer to see what works best for that particular situation.


Rich