It seems that in recent years, people have forgotten about hyperfocal focusing.

In fact, hands up if you've never heard of it? Now, if you have heard of it, hands up those that use it? That's not many of you I guess. 

To explain, for those of you scratching your collective heads. The hyperfocal distance is the distance at which, with the current lens and aperture settings, you will achieve the maximal depth of field possible. With all the thoughts about wide-aperture lenses and the effect on depth of field from a smaller sensor, it's no wonder we're not seemingly so concerned about getting as much as possible - for many situations we already have more than we might want! 

Hyperfocal focusing has long been the preserve of those of us who enjoy shooting landscapes. Those who more often than not want as much depth of field as we can attain to ensure sharpness from the front to the back of the scene. But, that takes the narrow view, the view where rules for one type of photography don't cross into other types. 

Just the other week I was photographing Artic Terns in flight on Inner Farne, and being the sort of photographer I am, I was trying to think of different techniques I could use (not for me the idea of being creative with the subject, more the idea of being creative with techniques!). An idea popped into my head - slow sync flash. The sky was dark, but to really get some mood into the image, I'd need some flash on the underside to provide some detail. It was a good start, but then I began to think about wider angle lenses. Why should you photograph a bird in flight with a longer lens? I'd had success in the past with wide-angle shots of birds flying close over-head, so why not give it a go again?

Now you may be wondering where on earth hyperfocal focusing fits in to all this. Well, I'll tell you. Artic Terns get close. Very close. So close in fact that you'd best wear a hat or risk them drawing blood on your scalp as they protect their nests.  They're also quick. there is no way you're going to track focus them as they dive-bomb you from such close range, so you need to find a different solution. You could always pre-focus on the sort of distance you think they might be at when you shoot, by why not better make use of hyperfocal focusing? 

I was shooting with an EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at 24mm. I wanted depth of field to get as much in as posible and I wanted a slowish shutter speed to give some blur in the wings. Assuming the birds would be around 50cm away, I could set that as my focal distance, but then my depth of field (on the EOS 5D Mark II I was using) would have been about 85cm in total stretching from 0.32cm to 1.17m. Not bad, and probably enough to get the result I wanted, but that depth of field is not that wide. With such fast moving birds, there is no guarantee they'll be in focus. The hyperfocal distance however was 0.87cm. Set the lens to that and I'd ended up with depth of field that stretches from 44cm to infinity - more than enough to ensure I got the whole bird in focus provided it didn't get closer than 44cm. 

Is that the end of it? Well, yes and no. Assuming I actually wanted that depth of field to strech a little closer just in case the birds got really close, I could have shortened the total depth of field by focusing a little closer than the hyperfocal distance. By way of example, had I focused at 65cm, my total depth of field would have stretched from 37cm to 2.55m - far enough that I would have had no problems because I was waiting for the birds to get closer than that, and also giving me an extra 7cm close distance for the really near ones. 

So how do you calculate the hyperfocal focus distance? Sadly, it's not possible to do in your head (well, at least I can't do it in my head!). You can find many calculators online to do it for you, I like www.dofmaster.com and there are also many apps for the iPhone (try PhotoCalc for example) and other smart phones. You can even get an excel sheet to do the calculations for you. 

So, do you ever use hyperfocal focusing? If so, what for?

Well, the obvious one, the one we've talked about already, is the addition of full HD movie control! Having spent this morning playing a bit with it, I can safely say it works, and it works well!

If you want to get to the manual movie controls, here's the tip - don't spend ages looking through the menus to find where the setting is or how to enable it, just slip the mode dial into M and off you go. Not only will stills shooting be in manual, but movie exposure will be too. This presents another bonus too. Before, when shooting stills while shooting movies, you weren't quite sure what exposure the camera would use for the still image.  Now though, you're exposure is set in the manual mode so stills and movies will have the same exposure... while taking stills during movie shooting has not proved to be that popular, it's nice to know it's a little easier to make the two match now - perfect for when you want to put them together in a multimedia slideshow later.

v1.1.0 has incorporated some other changes as well, here's the list:

1. It disables the function of the depth of field preview button when you're playing images back or when the menu screen is displayed. This is actually a big change and not one I'd even realised I wanted! It has become a fact of life that I regularly knock the DOF preview button when review images or looking in the menu, thereby having to stop what I'm doing and find my way back there. Now though, it doesn't! 

2. Fixes a phenomenon where the peripheral illumination of images cannot be properly corrected, even if the images were captured with the lens peripheral illumination correction function set to Enable.

3. Fixes the algorithms of the Auto Lighting Optimizer function when Custom Function C.Fn II-3 Highlight tone priority is enabled.

4. (The fabled language update so often seen in firmware changes!) Fixes incorrect indications on the Arabic, Romanian, Spanish, and Ukrainian menu screens.

5. Changes the battery information displayed on the camera when using the optional Battery Grip BG-E6.

For those struggling to find the update link, enlightenment can be found here!

If you use one of the consumer cameras, from the EOS 50D down, you may well have come across the A-DEP mode. But what does it do and how does it work?

 A-DEP stands for Auto Depth [of field] and it aims to give you enough depth of field in your image for the subjects you want to capture. It's most used for landscapes as this is where you most commonly want lots of depth of field. 

In A-DEP mode, the camera evaluates the scene and uses the focus points to determine the nearest and farthest subjects. One thing you need to be aware of is that it only picks up subjects under the focusing points - it won't find a subject not covered by them.

By calculating the distance from the nearest to farthest points, the camera can calculate a point to focus on and an aperture to use to give you enough depth of field to ensure they are all in focus. With this done it works out a shutter speed to use to give the correct exposure and you're ready to shoot. 

It's not a widley used mode really and for many, it is seen as a shortcut for those that don't yet understand the relationship between aperture, subject distance and depth of field, but if you're shooting a landscape it's worth experimenting with, even in conjunction with your normal method of shooting, just to see ther results.