Landscape Photography

Left Image
Pentax 67, 200mm f-4 lens, Fuji Velvia 50, Bogen tripod and ball head.
Spot meter using Minolta Auto Meter IIIF and viewfinder 5 degree attachment. 1/125 sec and f-8.

Good landscape photography depends on light, weather, and viewpoint. Your choice of lens, exposure, and framing also have great influence on the final photograph. Early morning and late afternoons are the best as the changing light give different effects. Exposure is very critical and you must be able to quickly determine the best settings to keep up with the changing light. The fastest way to calculate exposure is by using a spot meter and reading the most important part of the scene and adjusting your exposure accordingly. If your camera does not have a spot meter use a telephoto lens to read a portion of the scene, set the exposure and change to the lens you wish to use. Reading an area such as the sky and opening up is usually the best way.


Right Image: Pentax 67, 200mm f-4 lens, Fuji Velvia 50, Bogen tripod and ball head. Spot meter using Minolta Auto Meter IIIF and viewfinder 5 degree attachment. 1/125 sec and f-11.




Midday with front lighting produces shadow less photographs. Backlighting can
be used for silhouettes. Side lighting can give good texture. Weather also has great influence on landscape photography. Most people consider sunny days the best time to photograph but stormy days can give a different mood and change a photograph from being boring to spectacular. Your viewpoint is also very important. Look at the whole scene and study it from different angle. Look for lines, shapes, and how different objects relate to each other. Also look for a strong foreground such as colorful flowers or rocks as this can add depth.

 Focusing can be a bit tricky. Stopping down to a very small aperture doesn't always mean you will have a good depth-of-field and you risk diffraction (see Problems & solutions). Start by focusing somewhere in the middle of the scene and check sharpness by using depth-of-field preview if your camera has one and adjust f-stops or point of focus to achieve the best depth-of-field. You can also use  hyperfocal distance marking on the lens. The hyperfocal distance is the distance from the camera to the optimum focusing point to achieve maximum depth of field. The distance depends on the lens focal length (f), lens aperture used (a) and the circle of confusion of the lens (c, which is a constant: 0.036 for 135 format):

Using depth-of-field scale on lenses as a guide is a
good way of checking the range of sharpness in the photograph.

Choose your lens carefully. Wide angle and moderate telephotos are the most often used but longer telephotos can also be used to isolate part of the landscape. Take caution when using wide angle lenses as you can easily be tempted to include everything you see. That is the easy part. The difficult part is to compose the picture in a way that you do not include unnecessary objects that have no relation to the rest of the scene and are distracting. 24mm to 35mm lenses should be enough for most wide angle landscape photography but you might want to add wider lenses such as a 20mm or even a 17mm lens if you do a lot of photography in this area.

Moderate telephotos and longer telephotos are great for isolating a part of the landscape or and bringing distant subjects closer. The main problem with these lenses when photographing in hot sunny days is haze as can create soft photographs. I also recommend carrying a polarizing and ND graduated filters. Polarizers are used to darken a blue sky and to increase color saturation. ND graduated filters can create balance between the dark and light areas in a scene. A tripod, cable release are the other essential tools you need for well composed and sharp photographs.

My Pentax 67 telephoto 200mm lens shown here, is my most widely used landscape photography lens.