A view from the forest onto open meadows offers the opportunity to create a landscape photo with an impressive depth effect. A piece of forest is photographed on at least one side - ideally on all four sides - as a frame for the view. This makes the picture look particularly three-dimensional. However, the following should be observed for the best image effect:
Exposure:
Only the view should be taken into account when taking the exposure. The view, as the most important part of the picture, must not be overexposed under any circumstances. The picture frame of trees, on the other hand, may appear underexposed - in extreme cases even black. To achieve this, either use spot metering if your camera has this option. Or you can use the exposure compensation function (+/- button) to avoid overexposing the main subject with a slight minus correction. First set a value of -1 and check the result. If the background still appears too bright, set a stronger minus value; if the background is too dark, set a weaker one.
Sharpness:
It is always irritating for the viewer of an image if elements in the foreground are slightly out of focus. You should avoid a slight blur in the foreground at all costs. The forest picture frame must either be completely sharp at the edge of the picture or extremely blurred. Anything in between is not good. You can achieve this in the following way:
- Completely blurred foreground: Instead of whole trees, choose a few leaves as the picture frame and get very close. Ideally, the leaves at the edge of the picture should only be a few centimetres away from the front lens of your lens. Set your camera to exposure program A, which allows you to set a fixed aperture. You select the smallest aperture you can set. This will give you the shallowest depth of field possible with your lens. Now focus on the background and take your photo with completely blurred leaves in the foreground.
- Very sharp foreground: For this version too, set your camera to exposure program A, which allows you to set a fixed aperture. Now select the largest possible aperture number that can be set on your lens. This will give you the maximum possible depth of field. Find a position from which you have the greatest possible distance between the camera and the foremost forest elements that form the picture frame. Focusing now becomes a little tricky. The easiest way is to focus on the foreground elements furthest away from you. Then check the picture and see if the view in the background is really in focus with this setting. If not, look for an element that is a little further away from you than the one you focused on in the first attempt. You can usually achieve a good result with just a few attempts.
Pro tip for perfectionists with lots of time:
If you are good at manually adjusting the distance on your lens, you will get the perfect picture result if you focus precisely at the so-called "hyperfocal distance". The hyperfocal distance is the distance that you have to set manually on the distance scale of your lens so that the background (photographically infinitely far away) is at the far end of the focus range, i.e. just in focus, and the depth of field on the other side towards you is as close as possible to the camera. The exact distance you need to set for this depends on the lens used, the pixel size on the sensor, the zoom setting and the aperture setting. There are smartphone apps that calculate the exact value based on these parameters, e.g. "Optimum Camera Settings - pro". You will have to adjust the distance calculated in this way manually in any case, as there is often no element in the picture at the point at which you would have to focus according to this rule.
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