One of the most beautiful sights in Italy, a country full of incredible photo opportunities, is twilight at Manarola. This is one of the five villages that comprise the Cinque Terre coast. To capture all of the detail in the shadows and highlights, I used a three-frame HDR composite with one f/stop increment between the frames. The last time I was here, the sea was stormy and the waves huge. The pretty reflections you see here were obscured by the churning sea. This tranquil and beautiful scene belies what can really happen when a storm comes. I used a 16-35mm lens, and my settings were f/2.8 and 100 ISO. I didn’t need a small lens aperture for depth of field because all of the elements, including the foreground rocks, were beyond the optical infinity of the lens (“optical infinity” is the point at which the lens can’t focus any further away). In this situation, everything will be sharp at any lens aperture. Yes, the sharpest aperture is one or two f/stops down from wide open, but I wanted to minimize the shutter speed, even though I was using a tripod, because the tripod was leaning against a railing so I could get this composition. Other people were in contact with the railing, and I was afraid that unwanted vibrations would degrade the quality of the shot.
6 Comments
Oct 18, 2017, 4:18:17 AM
Jim - Hi Ian. Thanks for the compliment. This concept only works with lenses 50mm and less. The 'optical infinity' point is the approximately the same as the focal length. 16mm = 16 feet. For maximum DOF, focus to 1/3 of this number, i.e. roughly 5 1/2 feet.
Oct 18, 2017, 3:50:12 AM
Ian - Hi Jim,
Fantastic image as always. with regard to the optical infinity of the lens, how do you determine this concept will work with any particular given lens? I often use my canon 10-22mm wide angle lens for landscape shots and is almost always set to infinity. I assume the shorter focal length of the lens would make this simpler to achieve.
Oct 18, 2017, 2:50:11 AM
Ian - Hi Jim,
Fantastic image as always. with regard to the optical infinity of the lens, how do you determine this concept will work with any particular given lens? I often use my canon 10-22mm wide angle lens for landscape shots and is almost always set to infinity. I assume the shorter focal length of the lens would make this simpler to achieve.
Oct 17, 2017, 6:12:08 PM
Maria - Jim,
I have seen many pictures of this spot, but this is by far the prettiest I have ever seen. Wow!! The colors including in the foreground rocks are gorgeous.
Maria
Oct 17, 2017, 5:01:30 PM
MarieRicketts - Beyond Bieautiful, Jim!!
Oct 17, 2017, 12:19:36 PM
Jim - Thank you very much, Marie.
And thank you also, Maria. Very kind words.