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nandadevieast wrote:
I am new to landscape/long exposure photography, have only shot people and candids till now.
You do not actually want to focus at infinity, but partly in to the scene. Any real landscape, even distant, will have some actual depth, e.g. front and back of the trees. Even at ultra-wide focal lengths, this is necessary.
And once you get to ultrawide focal lengths, the interesting images tend to be of closer subjects than infinity.
But supposing your subject is actually at infinity, the way this problem was traditionally solved was using the depth of field scale on the lens. You focus the lens on the most distant part of subject, and note the distance reading. Then turn the focussing ring so that distance aligns with the far mark corresponding to the f stop the lens is set at. What is in focus is then everything between the two markings with that f-stop. For the special case of infinity, just line the infinity mark up with the far marker for that f number.
Twist zooms, including this one, don't have the depth of field scale because it varies by focal length. Trombone zooms usually had curved lines that lined up with the extending barrel. Canon's fixed focal length L lenses usually have a depth of field scale, but often only for one or two f-stops and so narrow it's effectively useless. Zeiss manual focus lenses have decent ones.
You can get "depth of field calculator" phone apps that calculate the near and far zones of focus and carry those with you.
Have been really struggling with how to frame in the dark and how to focus manually.
I have this lens, and have never once attempted to manually focus it. I wheeled out my old f/2.8 instead for night photography last week, but even then autofocussed. If you possibly can, I recommend autofocus with this lens - f/4 is slow, and the lens is actually dimmer than that. For reference, I do manually focus my Zeiss 100mm f/2, my Canon TS-E, and my Canon macro lens. But not this one.
Edited on Feb 22, 2017 at 09:07 PM · View previous versions
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