Landscape Digital Photography

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Digital photography landscape questions?

I have a few questions about landscape photography. First off, when shooting landscape photography without a tripod (in the daytime), what's the best f stop setting to use? Also, to ensure that the entire photo is in focus, what exactly should one focus on (foreground, background, middleground)? Finally, do wide lenses take the best landscape photos? Thanks!!!

PS: I have a Canon Rebel XT (8mp) and shoot Jpegs.

The best F stop to use depends souly upon the lighting conditions, as well as your stylisitic approach to how you visualize landscapes. Your F stop or aperture as you know not only controls the amount of light going to the sensor but it also controls the amount of depth in your image. Traditionalist such as Ansel Adams and his F64 group said the best image is one that one that is completely sharp from foreground to background, hence the reason as to why they always insisted on using the smallest possible F stops on their cameras which was F64. Realize of course 35mm or digital SLR cameras cannot stop down that far but depending upon your lens you should be able to stop down to at least F 22.
So the question is can you shoot handheld at F22? Again that depends upon your lighting conditions. If you were to follow the sunny 16 rule then on a sunny day set your aperture to F16 and your shutter speed to the closest number to your ISO. So if you are using an iso100 setting then set your shutter to 100 or the next closest setting possible.
As for the idea of wide angle lenses being better for landscapes, again this is more of a stylisitic choice you can create great landscape photos with any number of lenses from wide angle to telephoto. However, since a wide angle lens is going to have a wide field of view it makes wide angle lenses popular for landscape photography.

Better Pictures with Your Digital Camera Landscape Photos A Tripod


landscape digital photography5
landscape digital photography5
landscape digital photography5