The other day I was out on-location taking photographs of a big landscape, and the foreground was starting to get a bit blurry … this got me thinking about the best apertures to use for landscape photography to get the most out of my camera.

As a rule, you want to set your aperture between f11 and f16 to get more of your photograph in focus. Anything bigger than this, f1.4 - f5.6, will start to blur the foreground and anything smaller (f18-f32) will start to soften the whole photograph.

Llyn Y Fan Fach Panorama landscape with a touch of frost (not the TV show)

However, this is only considering a certain type of landscape scenario. Different apertures can be beneficial in different circumstances, and I cover all those circumstances in this article …

Aperture is the size of the hole you set your camera to to let light in. It is displayed as an f number and the smaller the f number the bigger the hole.

Aperture sizes in camera lenses — Aperture sizes in relation to each other, the bigger the hole, the more light is let in

What Parts of Your photograph are Important?

The first thing to consider before choosing an aperture is what is important in your photograph. In fact, this is one of the most important things you should ask yourself whenever you are out taking landscape photos.

I try to do this when I have set up the shot, and it has stopped me from getting too excited and forgetting to get the right settings, especially when there is some fleeting light that isn’t going to be around for long.

Do you want everything in focus, or do you want specific things in your shot in focus?

Let’s say you want to photograph some grand trees and show how big they are compared to a couple of walkers in the environment. Then the trees and the people are important, and you don’t have to worry about having a bit of blur in the foreground, in fact in this example below, I’d say it is preferable to blur out the foreground, so you control where the viewer will look … and to do this, you use a really wide aperture (Which is a low f number). Click here if you are unsure how the aperture f number rating works.

If everything in the image is important, then you need to use a smaller aperture, and something like f11 to f16 is a great aperture for this … most of the time! Read on and you will start to understand what I mean.

This photograph was shot at f16 and everything from the grass in the foreground to the horizon is in focus. This wouldn’t have been the case if I had used a wider aperture like f5.6.

Durdle door sunrise with a narrow aperture — This was shot at f16 with the A7iv and the 17-28mm from Tamron

So how you compose your photograph will have a big impact on what aperture you use.

If you have things really close to the lens, like 10-20cm away and also things on the horizon, and they are all important … you may have to focus stack, which is a whole new subject that I cover in this video.

Other times, the whole of your photograph might be really far away, like this mountain in the Dolomites. If this is the case, you can get away with wider apertures as it is all so far away, and all on the same focal plane.

Dolomites, Italy, RX10iii at 600mm — Everything is really far away in this photo, so I used a wider aperture as it was just after sunrise (f5.6)

Your Lens has a Sweet Spot

Every lens has a sweet spot and (almost) every lens has a bit of a weakness. This can vary from lens to lens, but generally, wide open, at the lower f-numbers all but the most expensive lenses will be soft around the edges.

As you raise your f number, making the aperture smaller, the image becomes sharper, and most lenses are sharpest around f8. However, this doesn’t mean you should just shoot everything at f8. You need to take into consideration the depth of field.

Depth of field refers to how much is in focus from front to back. Generally, with a smaller aperture (higher F-number), the depth of field will be larger than with a bigger aperture (smaller f-number).

So, at f1.4 not much will be in focus whereas at f16 much more will be in focus, to an acceptable level.

Different Sensor Sizes Have Different Characteristics

Another thing to take into consideration is the size of the sensor. The bigger the sensor, the shallower the depth of field is for a given aperture at a fixed distance.

So if you were to take a photograph of a scene with a medium format camera like the Fujifilm GFX100 and then photograph the same scene with the Sony RX100, at the same aperture, distance and relative focal length, the RX100 would have a much deeper depth of field giving you more in focus from front to back …

But then you’re probably thinking, why then don’t all landscape photographers just shoot with crop sensor cameras?

Well, this comes down to a lot of different things from the quality of the sensor, the quality of the glass, the dynamic range of the camera and many other factors. So, there is a lot more to this than just picking one camera that fits all. Different cameras and different sensors work better for certain needs, conditions and skill levels.

Give a camera phone to a beginner and sometimes they will get a good photograph, but give the same person a gfx100 and they would probably struggle, whereas if a pro had the Fujifilm camera, they would be able to manipulate the settings and the composition to get a great photo or at least the beginnings of a great photo.

This table shows the approximate equivalent depths of field depending on aperture and sensor size with a fixed distance to the subject

So if you are shooting with a camera that has a 1” sensor, you could get everything in focus from front to back with an aperture of f4 whereas with a medium format camera, you might have to shoot at f16.

This is great for beginners as aperture isn’t so important to get everything in focus. But just know that the bigger sensors do give better quality as there is physically more sensor to capture the small details in the frame … however they need a higher level of understanding of photography to get the best out of them.

This photo was taken at f2.8 on the RX10iii … it isn’t the world’s best photo, but I really like how it came out … and I have this hanging on my wall at home.

Don’t Solely Focus on Exposure

If you only think about your exposure at all costs, this can get you using the wrong aperture.

Let’s say you are at ISO 1000, the shutter speed is at 1/50 second with a 50mm lens on the Sony A7iii, shooting handheld, and to get a good exposure you must open the aperture up to f4.

You can’t really raise the ISO as your shot will become noisier, you can’t lower the shutter speed because you will start to blur the shot from the movement of your hands … so what do you do?

If you need to get everything in focus, you must get the camera on a tripod so you can close your aperture down, letting you lengthen your shutter speed and lower your ISO.

On a tripod you could then legitimately shoot at f16, ISO 250 with a shutter speed of 1 second and get the same exposure but much more in focus … and if I didn’t have a tripod, in this case I would try to balance the camera on my bag, or on a wall, somewhere to stabilise the camera and use those better settings to get a good photograph.

If this isn’t an option, you need to rethink your photograph. Is there a way to use that shallow depth of field to add to the photograph?

Conclusion

You won’t always get it right and sometimes you will look back at your photographs and wonder what you were thinking … in fact, I sometimes still do this, and I have been a photographer since 1996 … and this is what makes photography so frustrating and infuriating but when you get it right, it really does make it all worthwhile, after all, if it was easy, it would get really boring really quickly!

But think about what is in your photograph before you set your aperture.

What is important to the photograph?
Does everything need to be in focus?
If there are lots of things close to you and really far away, use a narrower aperture, like f11 to f16.
If everything is far away and all at the same distance from you, you can use the sweet spot of the lens at around f8 if there is enough light for this setting.
And if it is getting dark and you don’t have a tripod, you will have to compromise …

Now if you want to have a read about getting better exposures in your landscape photographs, click here, I go into detail about getting better photographs when you are out hiking with your camera!

Thanks

Mike