Hyperfocal Distance Table Calculator
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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.
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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.
Hyperfocal Distance Table |
Aperture |
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h / 2 |
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Aperture |
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h / 2 |
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Aperture |
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h / 2 |
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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:
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) |
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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
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