Focus to Infinity

[justThorne]

Hyperfocal distance has its time and place, its appropriate when you have near and far subject matter that you want similarly resolved with detail and sharpness.

No doubt! (I do understand why landscape photographers shooting at hillsides are using it, among numerous other contexts.)



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I'm not really sure why someone would want to just walk around and not even look through their camera, focusing doesnt' take very long so why not try to be more efficient?

<div>Well, this guy was doing street photography, so a) he could "shoot from the hip" when he didn't want to broadcast that he was taking a picture, and b) he could pull up his camera, frame, and fire faster if the focus was already resolved. He was talking about the 24mm f/2.8, which reaches infinity at only ten or twelve feet. </div>
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Focusing at infinity is inefficient in that it wastes the depth of field behind infinity focus point. if the subject matter you care about is only very far away, then yes it makes sense. focusing at infinity has some leeway built into it so its never extremely accurate.

My 24mm f/2.8 is certainly extremely accurate at infinity - stunningly so, actually. My 100mm Macro might be less accurate, compared to its specialty. My 50 f/1.4 might definitely be less accurate - I'm not sure but years of experience with (three of) them make me feel infinity is its weak flank (though I'm actually talking about its AF performance, rather than the glass itself).


But I'm confused about "wastes the depth of field behind infinity focus point." Do you mean (to sometimes regret) that "it's all one big flat plane out there"? Yeah, lack of focal differentiation at a distance (from shorter lenses) would sometimes be frustrating, but my point here is to talk about the opposite times in which it wouldn't be.


And my biggest point, as I said, is to wonder why this is all discussed so rarely.



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