A landscape picture for a change.
Bexhill beach, looking back towards Hastings.
Met up with my friend Dan to catch the sunrise and do a spot of seascape photography. Got a few shots that I am happy with, the light was quite pleasing but not the most spectacular I have seen. Mind you, I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep getting up early as the days get longer and the sunrise gets earlier and earlier. Perhaps I’ll end up sticking to the evenings instead. 😉
When shooting wide angle landscapes I nearly always switch to manual mode as well as manually focusing using the Hyperfocal distance method. This way I can ensure that my shots will always be sharp back to front, this also allows me to quickly move around to find different compositions without having to alter anything except shutter speed. On my crop sensor Nikon Dslr, at a Focal length of 18mm and focusing between 5 and 7ft at f11, means my depth of field will be roughly 3ft to infinity. Also, a lens usually performs best in terms of sharpness (where more depth of field is desired) somewhere in the mid range of its aperture settings. So in theory I should be getting the best possible results at apertures of around f11ish (give or take a stop), without getting too particular of course. Stopping your lens down to say f16/f22 will start to produce refraction and as a result a slight softness, which is sort of counter intuitive. That doesn’t stop me stopping down too if I need a longer shutter speed but I also use ND filters as another way of reducing light.
Shot using an ND4 grey grad filter to balance the land and sky. Processed in Lightroom 5.3.
Dave Wares 