All About Aperture For Landscape Photography: The Best Choices

This article has everything you need to know about choosing the best aperture for landscape photography.

As a general guide, the best aperture for landscape photography will be between F8 and F16.

This will give you a good depth of field while keeping most of your image sharp and in focus.

It is important to note, however, that this is only a general guide, and different scenarios could benefit from aperture numbers outside of this. 

That’s what I will cover in this article; the different apertures you might want to consider depending on your scene.

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Let’s explore aperture, how it affects your photos, and the best camera settings for capturing stunning landscapes.

Aperture 101.

First things first: What is aperture?

The aperture refers to how wide you open up the diaphragm in your lens, which controls how much light enters your camera’s sensor. 

Aperture is measured in “f stops”, which can range from large to small. 

The smaller the f-stop number, the wider the aperture is, so more light enters your camera.

The larger the f-stop number, the narrower the aperture is, which means less light enters your camera.

But aperture does more than just control the amount of light. It also determines how much of your landscape will be in focus in your shot, by controlling the depth of field. 

This means that generally a higher f-stop number will mean that a large area of your image will be in focus, and a smaller area out of focus.

So, it goes to figure that a lower f-stop number will result in an image where a small area of your image will be in focus, and a larger area out of focus.

Aperture and Exposure

The most important aspect of aperture in your photography is the integral role it plays in determining your exposure.

To create the perfect exposure for your landscape photos, you need to balance ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.
These are the three elements that make up the Exposure Triangle,  and they work together to determine the overall exposure of your images.

For example, if you’re shooting a landscape in bright daylight, you may want to set your ISO to the lowest possible (usually 100 or 200), your aperture to a mid-range value (such as f/8 or f/11) to ensure a good depth of field, and your shutter speed to around 1/250th of a second to capture the scene without motion blur.

For example, if you have set your ISO and shutter speed, you will adjust your aperture to give you the correct exposure.

The wider the aperture (lower number), the brighter your image will be. While the narrower (higher number) your aperture will darken your image.

This is the most important element to understanding aperture in your photography, closely followed by sharpness and depth of field: 

Lens Aperture and Sharpness (Depth of Field)

Along with controlling the amount of light hitting your sensor, the aperture determines how much of your image will be in focus.

This is referred to as the depth of field (DOF). Wikipedia defines depth of field as ‘the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects that are in acceptably sharp focus in an image captured with a camera’.

Basically, depth of field is how much of your  image is sharp and in focus.

The larger the aperture you use (which is the smaller number), the shallower your depth of field will be.

Think here about portraits, or macro photography, where the subject is super sharp and the background is blurry, like in this flower image:

Conversely, a small aperture (a larger number) will result in a greater area of your image sharp and in focus.

What Parts of Your Photograph are Important?

The type of scene that you are capturing will largely determine how much of your image you want to be sharp and in focus.

This is something you will assess along with your composition, and what the hero or subject of your image is. You can then use your aperture to further emphasise and bring attention to where you think is most important in your photo.

Usually for landscapes, you will want as much of the image as possible in focus, whereas for closeups, or macro, you may want to have a blurred background which gives the most attention to your subject.
You also may have an artistic vision which goes against these guidelines. So if you wish to leave the foreground out of focus to lead the viewer’s eye to the subject or background, this is an interesting style to experiment with.

Your Lens has a Sweet Spot

Just to complicate matters, every lens has what is referred to as its ‘sweet spot’.

This is the aperture at which that lens will give you the sharpest image (assuming you have all other settings correct).

This is a good place to start when you are trying to determine the best aperture for landscape photography.

Because all lenses are built differently, this varies with each lens.

Generally this tends to be around the middle of the aperture range, so F8 – F11 for most lenses.

Your best bet is to do a google search on ‘lens model sweet spot’ for your particular lens.

So, What Is The ‘Best Aperture’?

Let’s put all the explanations above together, and look at what the ‘best’ aperture is for the scene you are shooting.

For a sharp image front to back, you would typically want an aperture between F8 and F16.

This is generally the range of aperture in landscape photography that you will be aiming for.

But there are times that you will shoot outside of these areas, so you should consider what your vision is, and what parts of your photo are the most important.

The Middle Range Apertures (F8 – F11)

The middle range apertures between F8 and F11 are great ‘go to’ aperture settings for a wide-range of photography subjects and situations, particularly in landscape photography.

This range is what I refer to as the ‘safety zone’. You can usually be confident in this range that the majority of your image will be sharp and give you flexibility with your shutter speed, particularly if shooting handheld.

When to Use a Wide Aperture (Smaller than F8)

An open, or wide aperture less than around F8 are good when you want to blur areas around your main subject.

Portraits and macro photography are great examples of when you would want to use a wide aperture. This will result in your person or flower being in focus, and you can have a nice soft blurred background.

When to Use a Narrow Aperture (larger than F11)

A closed, or narrow aperture will achieve the opposite, so the result will be more of the photo will be in focus.

But, like many things, there is too much of a good thing.

I too, thought this; if F11 was good, then going up to apertures such as F22 would be even better!

Unfortunately this is not the case. Depending on your lens, and the magic sweet spot mentioned earlier, the sharpness won’t be as good.

When you go outside the medium range apertures and away from this sweet spot, diffraction can start to occur. 

Diffraction is basically an optical effect that comes into play that results in loss of sharpness in your image.

Yes, more of the image will be in focus, but it won’t be as sharp, so it’s all about balance.

This is where it gets very technical and I don’t pretend to understand all of this, but if you are interested to learn more, FStoppers has a great article here: A Closer Look at Lens Diffraction
So, unless I’m looking at shooting sunstars or starbursts, I rarely go beyond the magical F16.

A Note On Focus Stacking

There are times that you can’t get everything in focus in one shot, so you can take two or more shots and then photo-stack them in editing software such as Photoshop or Luminar Neo.

If you have things really close to the lens, and also things in the background, and everything in your scene is  important, you may want to consider focus stacking.

While this is considered a fairly simple technique that lets you end up with everything sharp from front to back, I would say it’s beyond a complete beginner. 

Basically you would take one shot focussed on your foreground, one for the midground and one focussed on the background.

Because you have a number of images with different focal points, combining these images in post-processing will ensure that the foreground, midground and background are all in sharp focus.

This is best done on a tripod so that your composition is exactly the same. If there’s any movement between images, they won’t line up correctly when they are stacked.

It’s also best if it’s a scene without any movement, as the motion will look different in each shot. There are ways around this in post-processing but it does get more complicated.

It is a great technique that can produce stunning results, and if you’d like to learn more, Mark Denney has a great tutorial on it: 

Sunstars

Sunstars are one time that I do go above say F16.

Basic Tips For Capturing the Sunstar Effect

• Set your aperture to between f16 and f22 (a small aperture). The smaller the aperture, the stronger the effect can be.
• Because you are photographing a bright light you will need to be very careful with your exposure so you don’t end up with a very overexposed image.
• Set your exposure to one or two stops under-exposed (focusing on your main subject – not the light source). Don’t underexpose too much though, or you’ll need to correct the shadows in post-processing.

Conclusion

This article was all about aperture for landscape photography, and I truly hope you found it helpful.

Understanding aperture and how it affects your photography is an integral part of improving your images, and it doesn’t have to be too technical (unless you’d like it to be).

It does require a balancing act between getting correct exposure and how much of your image you want to be sharp and in focus.

Start with the middle range apertures between F8 and F11 and you’re off and running.

Then the best thing you can do, as always, is get out shooting and practising – most importantly, have fun, and don’t get too caught up in the numbers if you can help it – play until you achieve the effects you’re looking for.

That’s it for now – Keep Clicking

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