PanoHelp.com - Tips, techniques, and articles to help you create incredibly detailed panoramas
 You are here: PanoHelp.com » Hyperfocal Distance Table Calculator   Feedback  
Hyperfocal Distance Table Calculator

Next Article >>

Why Hyperfocal: Hyperfocal distance is a great photographer's tool for landscape photography and for taking pictures meant for panorama stitching -- because in these situations, you typically want everything near and far to be in focus.
For a particular lens focal length and camera aperture setting, the hyperfocal formula states that when you focus your lens at a specific distance, everything from half that distance to infinity will be in focus.
Custom Table: Enter the focal length that you are using for your lens below and press the 'Recalculate Table' button to generate a new Hyperfocal Distance Table below for your camera and lens.
Focal length: mm
Circle of confusion: mm - find constant for your digital camera
Units:
Hyperfocal Distance Table
Aperture - - - - - - - - - - -
Hyperfocal Distance Formula - - - - - - - - - - -
h / 2 - - - - - - - - - - -
Aperture - - - - - - - - - - -
Hyperfocal Distance Formula - - - - - - - - - - -
h / 2 - - - - - - - - - - -
Aperture - - - - - - - - - - -
Hyperfocal Distance Formula - - - - - - - - - - -
h / 2 - - - - - - - - - - -
Distances are in feet with a 'circle of confusion' constant of 0.02 mm
How to use the table: For example, you need to take multiple pictures to stitch into a panorama and you want everything in focus. You want to take pictures at the widest angle (eg: 18mm), so you generate a hyperfocal table for 18mm above. You estimate that no object in the room will be closer then 2.5 feet from the lens. So, you look in the 'h/2' rows for the first number less than 2.5 and find "2.45" at a hyperfocal distance of 4.89 feet at Aperture 11. In fact, any aperture 11-40 would work since all of these 'h/2' are less than your 2.5 feet requirement. Decide upon an aperture to use and set that in your camera, and then manually focus your lens at the 'h' distance for that aperture and you are all set.

Q: What do I do if my lens does not have a manual focus ring? If your lens does not have a manual focus ring, but your lens (or camera) still has 'manual / auto focus' selector switch, you can still manually set the focus distance. Just stand 'X' feet away from an object (like a picture on a wall), turn auto focus on, push the shutter down half way to cause the camera to focus on the object, and then turn of 'manual / auto focus' selector to 'manual'.


Hyperfocal distance is calculated using the following formula:
Hyperfocal Distance Formula
Where:
h-hyperfocal distance
f-focal length of lens (eg: 18mm, or 20mm)
A-aperture (eg: F11, or F5.6)
c-circle of confusion constant (eg: 0.02 mm)
To learn more about hyperfocal distance, visit Wikipedia or just search Google on Hyperfocal Distance to find a lot of material on this subject.

For example, to calculate the hyperfocal distance for an 18mm lens, with a CoC of 0.02, and an aperture of 11, you would have:
h = (18mm)²/(11*0.02mm) + 18 = 324/0.22 + 18 = 1490.7 mm, or 4.89 ft
Copyright © 2024 Jerry Jongerius