Lenses
When shooting the landscape, it is a
good idea to have a telephoto lens as well as the obvious choice of a
wideangle. Both lenses can bring out unique characteristics of the land
and reveal the myriad components that make up a successful landscape
image.
Photo by Adrian Ward
‘Using
a wideangle lens serves the purpose of giving you a dramatic and
sweeping view of the landscape,’ says Tom. ‘You’re able to include a lot
of foreground as well as the midground, horizon and sky. However, you
shouldn’t stick with this lens because the telephoto has much to offer
in the landscape. A telephoto lens can take little pockets of scenery
out of the overall landscape and produce various compositions. If you
use a telephoto you can get in close and explore all the little
intricate lines and details of the landscape that can draw your viewer’s
eye into a subject of your choice, such as a barn or an arrangement of
trees.’
Using a telephoto lens, which can cause distortion, also
means that you can experiment with pan stitches. This is a technique
that is particularly effective when faced with wide-open spaces.
Photo by David Walker
‘Pan
stitches, or panoramas, give the viewer a real sense of just how huge
the location is,’ says Tom. ‘They can be incredibly effective. You shoot
a sequence of images and then piece them all together in
post-production to form one huge photograph. Make sure you have a sturdy
tripod on a flat surface and that your camera is set to manual
settings, which you should be using anyway. Also make sure that the
autofocus function is turned off. Then gradually pan your camera in
increments from one end of the landscape to the next, taking a photo
with each pan. Once you have your images, import them into Photoshop and
use the Photomerge function (File>Automate>Photomerge).’
Tilt-and-Shift Lenses
Locations
such as Hole of Horcum offer copious amounts of detail, as well as
sweeping fields. A good tool to use when attempting to capture both
elements is a tilt-and-shift lens (for more on tilt-and-shift lenses,
see AP explains… on pages 64-65 of AP dated 10 September 2011).
‘Locations
such as this are an ideal spot to try out a tilt-and-shift lens,’ says
Tom. ‘We mostly associate this lens with art-based images that have
large portions of blur surrounding selective pin-sharp areas that create
faux miniature scenes. Here we’re going to putting the lens to
practical use.’
Photo by Tom Mackie
In
landscape photography, getting everything in focus is usually the
objective, but it is one that can often prove difficult when dealing
with points of focus that are both near and far away. Using the tilt
function on a tilt-and-shift lens means that once the background is in
focus, the foreground can also be brought into focus without having to
resort to a large f-number.
‘With the windy conditions that
we’re facing in these early hours, it’s going to be a problem using a
standard wideangle lens,’ says Tom. ‘Obviously, we want a large depth of
field in order to get everything in focus, but consequently that means
we have to resort to a long shutter speed. This means that the foliage
in our foreground is going to move. If you have a tilt-and-shift lens
this problem can be easily overcome.
‘When using a
tilt-and-shift lens you can leave your aperture fairly wide open because
you’re focusing on one part of the composition, such as the midground,’
Tom continues. ‘Once you have that one plane in focus, you can adjust
the tilt button on your lens and bring your foreground into focus. That
means you can get everything you want in focus and shoot using 1/60sec
or 1/80sec. By using the tilt function you can control the focus
points.’
Hyperfocal Distance
Hyperfocal distance is the
nearest distance at which a lens can be focused while keeping objects in
the background (infinity) acceptably sharp.
Photo by Andrea Hargreaves
‘To
put it simply, hyperfocal distance is making the most of your depth of
field,’ says Tom. ‘Let’s say that you’re shooting at f/14. In the
distance there’s a barn you’d like to get in focus. If you focus on the
barn, all of that usable depth of field is going on the barn and it’s
not bringing anything to the foreground, which will be out of focus.
However, if we take the image above as our example, you’ll see that the
best place to focus is one-third into the frame, which is the edge of
the heather ridge [that’s one-third into the image you see through the
viewfinder or in live view, not the environment as you see it outside
the camera]. If you focus at that point, you are maximising your depth
of field. That means that everything is acceptably sharp.’
