Nashville at f/2.8 Using Hyperfocal Distance

It was a dark and stormy night....

Well, it was almost dark with the occasional sprinkle. I was in downtown Nashville, having lugged a heavy backpack full of equipment (making a note to self that the really expensive carbon fiber tripod might truly be a worthwhile investment) that I might need in order to capture some cool
night/blue hour shots.

I scouted the Shelby Street Pedestrian Bridge and found some angles I thought would be good, sat down for a few to rest and enjoy the beautiful live music and people watch till it got a bit darker.

As blue hour began, and the lights I had endeavored to capture started to come to life, I started shooting, setting aperture at f/8.0 - f/11 even bumping up to f/16 and f/22, keeping ISO at 200 (to avoid having noisy images) in order to experiment with longer shutter speeds and the effects created.

Then, I see it, the General Jackson Showboat. Too cool! Thank goodness it was coming slow enough to do some quick setting changes. I wanted to catch it, in focus, along with that nice skyline background, but there was no way I could do that in the dark, without sacrificing something, right?

Lately, I have been fascinated with hyperfocal distance, especially doing real estate photography where I need most everything in sharp focus with limited lighting. Knowledge of the hyperfocal distance of my camera and lens allowed me to shoot this scene, at 9:30pm (so pretty dark), at f/2.8 (ISO 200) and have everything (including a moving object) in focus. So, I wanted to share with you some tips and tricks (and an app) that can help you get that elusive "shot in the dark."

Let's start with the definition.

Hyperfocal distance - the distance of a point of focus where everything from half of that distance (between this point and the lens) all the way to infinity is in acceptable focus. Different sensor sizes and focal lengths have different hyperfocal distances. If you are a math geek (like me) you will love this video explaining how this is calculated. Even if you aren't a math geek, it's a great video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXZFnqjhNxU&t=21s

There are several apps available that will calculate hyperfocal distance for you once you enter your camera and lens info and the desired f-stop. I use Hyperfocal on my iPhone (available on the iTunes app store https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hyperfocal/id512080457?mt=8) and it's well worth the 99 cents.

Here is a screenshot from the Hyperfocal app of the
settings I used for this photo:

You can see that I entered my camera, a Nikon D610; and my lens, a 24mm - 70mm.

Because it was dark I wanted to open my aperture as wide as possible, which for this lens is f/2.8.

I was also shooting at the widest view that lens was capable of, which is 24mm.

Having entered this information into the app, it calculated the hyperfocal distance to be 7.11 meters (23.33 ft). Which means anything from half that distance, 3.6 meters (11.81 ft) all the way to infinity would be in focus.

I knew the boat was definitely further away than 7.11 meters, and I wasn't as concerned about the foreground being in focus since most of it would just be water in this case, but I certainly wanted as much of that skyline to be in focus as possible. I focused on the front of the boat and this is the result.

Even though I have been experimenting lately with different hyperfocal distance settings, this one was such a dramatic example that I wanted to share it with you guys and explain how you can get those seemingly impossible shots just as you experienced them in person, even in a superchallenging
environment.

Happy night-shooting!

Much love!