How to Shoot Landscape Photos
Night Exposure 50D
When you want to shoot a landscape shot, wide angle lenses usually come in handy. I recommend the EF 17-40L F4.0 USM
When shooting a landscape, the most difficult questions users encounter tend to be
1) where do I focus for a landscape shot?
and
2) What aperture should I use for a landscape shot?
Answering those questions can be easy, but if you want the most accurate and complete answer please continue to read.
1) Where do I focus for landscape shots?
Answer: Focus for a landscape shot depends on the composition of your frame.
If you will be shooting a shot of a city and only care about certain buildings being in focus such as the shot above, you will focus on the subject matter that is most important to you.
When shooting with an XSi or 50D use an aperture of F8 or F11 but no greater than F11. Anything higher than F11 and you will lose sharpness in your photo due to diffraction. Diffraction is a softening of the image due to bends in light rays registering on small pixels on your sensor. There is an optimum balance between diffraction of light and image softness due to lens abberations. At wide apertures, lens abberation will soften photos, and at narrow apertures light diffraction will soften photos. Try to achieve the maximum balance between the two where both are minimized. This tends to occur near F8. If you use F22 you will actually obtain more depth of field, but hurt your results due to diffraction softening details.
Focus Based on Scenarios
Scenario 1: I want to take a picture of a mountain with nothing else around it. Focus on the mountain. Try and put your focal point in an area where there is high contrast, such as the top of the mountain meets the sky. This will help ensure accurate focus due to contrast change, which SLR focus depends on. Then recompose you shot and fire away.
Scenario 2: Where do I focus when I want objects in the near ground and foreground sharp and “in focus”?
This is where things get complicated, you will need an understanding of hyperfocal distance focusing. Its not hard, its easy actually, but its a concept that may take a couple of read throughs to really grasp. Here is our chapter on Hyperfocal Distance
What aperture should I use?
2) In general I always use F8 for my aperture on landscape shots, however I would be comfortable using F11 but have never felt the need to go that high. F8 extracts all of the detail that I need from my image, without causing any diffraction. Diffraction is as stated earlier, a softening of your image due to bends in the light rays hitting your sensor pixels. It can not be avoided, and the narrower the aperture, the greater your diffraction will be. Often times, beginner photographers do not realize how much Depth of Field is provided at lower apertures such as F8. They are more than adequate, and will help you achieve your best results.
Panoramas
Panorama made from 4 photos
Panorama’s are easier than ever with Photoshop CS3 and higher. When you take photos, you can capture a wide scene by taking multiple photos. The benefit of this vs a wide angle lens would be
1) much greater detail
2) less optical changes of the scene.
So remember, you can take shots by panning a scene, and combine them later. This will allow you capture far greater details when the image is enlarged.
Canon XSi Features, Settings and Configuration
How to Get Professional Photos from your Canon XSI
50D Guide:
50D Portraits
50D Basic Features
50D Landscape Photos
50D ISO Test
Canon XSi Guide
Hyperfocal Distance Explained