Hyperfocal Distance - Double The Distance Method Explained 

I calculated a hyperfocal distance that delivered a result outside the narrow depth of field of a telephoto lense. Is this calculated distance real or just an artifact?

Yeah.. even I felt the same

Nice work on the vid. Wide angle lenses like you used here are a little easier to work with for a larger distance. Does your technique work either longer focal lengths also? Or do you do any focus stacking? Either way, great vid & I’ll give it a go. Checked out your gear page. You’re definitely an outdoor, nature photographer! Does that M2 13” MacBook Pro handle LRC & PS layers & local brush work without bogging down. I really like the price on it & need something when on the road & would probably bump it up to 512gb & of course, use externals for storage. I’m a pc user when it comes to computers but thinking of trying a Mac. Happy shooting.

Thanks, Carmen! I’m not so hip in real life, so why pretend for a video 😜

Very glad to hear it! I think a lot of videos overcomplicate it with hyperfocal charts and calculations. Double the distance is easy and actually more accurate than the other methods.

Much appreciated!

Thank you, France, happy you found it useful!

So happy to hear it! Welcome to the channel, and that’s awesome, good luck on your degree!

Thank you, Michael! Glad to hear you liked it. Hyperfocal distance is so valuable for landscape photographers, and the DTD method means it’s not as difficult as some tutorials make it appear.

Maybe because landscape shooters are hiking to nice locations and they don't want to carry 3 or 4 (or more) lenses vs 2? I personally find myself wanting every lens I own when I'm out shooting, just incase I need it. And my bag is really heavy.

Glad you liked it, Hans, thanks! I’m definitely among those who have gravitated away from primes recently (used to shoot an all-prime kit) so I’ll try to answer your question. For me, there is a point at which image quality is not what holds a photo back. The 14-24mm f/2.8 does not have perfect image quality, but even at its worst it is not going to be distracting (even to a photographer’s critical eye). The 200% view in the video is quite exaggerated. (Wide angle lenses are also just super hard to design; I’ve only seen one 14mm prime with better image quality than this zoom, having tested 7 by my count from various manufacturers.) Don’t get me wrong - primes ARE better than similarly priced zooms in image quality, at least in the vast majority of cases. But zooms also weigh less because they replace several primes, and if their image quality doesn’t take away from the photo even in a large print (my personal threshold), they win out overall.

@@PhotographyLifeChannel ...And image which moves us are not necessarily related to the perfect technique...in the contrary, sometimes a bit of imperfection makes the work more human...altough I really know pretty well my craft and that I always want to learn more and more, I do not want to become a technique freak...I want to be touched when I take my photo and to offer that...

Can I see that photo somewhere?

Thanks, Mac, glad you liked it!

Happy to hear it, Ryan. Have fun in Chile, and keep the Double the Distance method in mind when you need to maximize depth of field!

Much appreciated, Darrien!

Very glad you liked it, thanks, Christopher!

Sure thing, Brian! Thanks for the feedback :)

Thanks Andrew! This video might answer your questions: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZXLm7-EkYSI.html

@@PhotographyLifeChannel thanks! Very informative! Just getting into DSLR (Canon APS-C) and trying to learn as much as I can. Always got decent pictures on our road trips with my Canon SX using manual settings and auto focus, along with my GoPro and my phone but hoping to step it up a notch! Thanks again!

It’s remarkable to me that such a useful, simple, and mathematically accurate technique hasn’t caught on very much yet! Hopefully it will soon. Glad we could introduce you to it.

Glad it was helpful!

Focus stacking is absolutely the best option if it works for your scene! Not always possible, especially if your subject is moving, of course. But when it works, it’s a great technique.

f/16 and f/22 does look not great tho.

Sure thing! Yeah, it’s strange how this method is easy to use and mathematically optimal, but so rarely talked about.

Awesome! Glad to hear it. It’s amazing to me how much this subject has been overcomplicated. Admittedly, picking the perfect aperture can take some practice, but the actual focusing component is so simple.

Thanks! It’s my favorite shirt 😄

Awesome, glad to hear it was useful!

Jamie This is false. It doesn’t work that way. Hyper focal distance depends on the size of aperture also. You can’t focus on the same point (per your doubling distance rule) on different aperture to get the crisp picture.

@@Notaphily I get that you'll need a certain aperture, as wide open would only give you a rather shallow dOf in any case. The way I understood it is that it's comparable to zone focus as in you have a certain depth of field in which subjects remain acceptably sharp and you try to move this zone to a point where it includes both your nearest and your furthest subject. Am I mistaken?

Jamie, you’re correct - the other commenter is misunderstanding the video. I never said that aperture is irrelevant. Certainly shooting at f/1.4 for a landscape will give you a blurry result in both the foreground and background! What the double the distance method does, which is critical, is EQUALIZE foreground and background sharpness. If your goal is maximum depth of field, that’s exactly what you’d want most of the time. DTD equalizes foreground and background sharpness *even at* super wide apertures, for what it’s worth - though at those apertures, “equalizing” doesn’t mean much because they’re both extremely blurry. So, you still need to pick a good aperture for your shot (probably f/8-11 on average, when shooting full frame) if you want maximum depth of field without extreme levels of diffraction. But as far as focus point, DTD is the way to go if you want your foreground and background equal in sharpness.

Sure thing! Glad it could be of use.

Glad you liked it, thanks!

Much appreciated!!

I usually stick to single-point and AF-S for landscapes. I don’t like the imprecision of the larger area modes, and don’t need tracking or anything like that for 99% of landscapes.

Sure thing! Glad it was useful.

Much appreciated!

Basically, the longer your focal length, the shallower the depth of field, the smaller aperture you'll want to use. But that's also a compromise because you'll probably have to use a tripod and also depending on sensor size, you'll get diffraction if you go too small aperture. I'd say a bit of trial and error. Try the "double the distance method" and use different apertures to see when everything is acceptably sharp, because it really depends on the lens and sensor size. That's why giving numbers isn't really helpful for this video and I'd guess he left them out on purpose for that reason.

This is where you need a chart or a calculator. Or you can google the formula so you can determine what FL/aperture you need for a particular range.

Good luck! Glad you enjoyed it!

Glad you liked it!

Smiff This is false. It doesn’t work that way. Hyper focal distance depends on the size of aperture also. You can’t focus on the same point (per your doubling distance rule) on different aperture to get the crisp picture.

झोले कामरेड़ (Given that you copy-pasted this comment from earlier, I will copy-paste my response): No, this video is correct. Even if you’re at f/1.4 with very shallow depth of field, focusing at double-the-distance will EQUALIZE foreground and background sharpness. It’s 100% true that the final sharpness of your photo also depends on your aperture, so you’re correct in that regard. But step one is focusing at the point that maximizes total depth of field regardless of your aperture. Only after that do you select an aperture like f/8, f/11, etc., that gives you as much depth of field as possible without running into excessive diffraction. In fact there is a mathematically accurate way to determine *which* aperture is the best compromise between diffraction and depth of field at this point, but explaining it went way beyond the scope of this video - you can read about it here if you want: photographylife.com/how-to-choose-the-sharpest-aperture - once you’ve read and understand that, if you disagree with any of the math related to the DTD method or choosing the sharpest aperture, I’ll update the video, but it just won’t happen, because all the information here is correct.

Photography Life it didn’t work for me. Idk

झोले कामरेड़ Not sure why that would be. Was the foreground too blurry, or the background? If it was both, you aren’t using a small enough aperture. If it was either the foreground or background, you aren’t focused on the DTD point and are either too far back or front focused.

Glad it was helpful!

You are quite welcome!

At all apertures and focal lengths, focusing at double the distance will give you equally sharp foregrounds and backgrounds. But it’s still obviously important to pick a good aperture and focal length to get the right depth of field. If you focus at DTD with something like a 70mm lens at f/2.8, sure, your foreground and background will be equally sharp as one another - they’ll just both be blurry.

Thank you, glad you liked it! I don’t have the RAW image available for download right now, but I’ll let you know - I think we will add it to the main Photography Life website before too long. The focus point is at the very front of the island, the closest part of it to me (far left side of the island).

Glad you thought so, thanks!

Thank you, Tanweer!

Good question Quentin. The answer is, only loosely. If your landscape has contours or a variety of different nearby elements, there’s no way that your composition will always have its closest object 5 feet from the camera as you move around. In turn, 10 feet will not always be the optimal focus distance of your lens, even if it was correct for the first shot. Remember - the hyperfocal distance method in this video is to compose the photo, find the closest object in your composition (even if it’s an empty area of dirt at the bottom of your frame), and double that distance. Unless you can guarantee that the closest object will be the same distance away in every one of your compositions - like *maybe* salt flats if you don’t change your tripod height or position of ballhead whatsoever as you walk around - focusing is something you need to do each time you change your composition.

agree it may work with wider lens but it's best to know the number

The latter! It’s the distance between the plane of your camera sensor and the shortest line to the subject.