The Best Camera Settings for Landscape Photography

A question I often get asked is “What settings did you use to take that photograph?”. I understand the curiosity. However, I feel the important part of camera settings is to understand what they do and how to use them, rather than know the settings a photographer used for a specific image - the latter really won’t help anyone much.

Discussion around camera settings for landscape photography is mostly focused around the exposure triangle - ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed. We need to understand how each of these three settings influence our exposure but also how they control the overall appearance of the photographs we take. Our cameras have many settings but I also like to draw peoples attention to Focal Length when thinking about which Aperture to use. Focal Length, along with other factors, affects Depth of Field.

I talk through how I decided on the camera settings for this image here.

As a guideline, when taking landscape images I try to:

1. Keep ISO as low as possible to give me the best image quality

2. Use an Aperture which gives me the desired Depth of Field for the scene I’m photographing

3. Use a Shutter Speed which helps create my vision for the photograph (be it having all motion frozen and appear sharp, or show some movement e.g. in water)

4. Keep in mind the Exposure Triangle and adjust settings as necessary to create the correct exposure

If you see a photograph and the camera settings used are visible, there is often no useful information to be gained from knowing those settings which were used by the photographer. It may be interesting but for them to mean anything you’d have had to be there with the photographer, know which type of camera they used (e.g. full frame, medium format), where they focused, the distance in the scene, how fast any movement was (e.g. tree movement, water flow), what their vision was for the photograph, which filters were used (if any) and so on. It is also important to realise that a different combination of settings could have been used to produce another photograph of the same scene, taken at the same time, and to the end viewer it would look the same.

My advice is to learn what ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed do and I have a video which can help you do this. I talk through the settings I decided to use for a number of photographs and most importantly why I chose those settings. You can watch the video on my YouTube channel here.

Focus, Depth of Field and Sharpness in Landscape Photography

One thing I see and hear more than anything in landscape photography is people asking how to get their images sharp from front to back. Where should they focus? What camera settings should they use? It is vital to know how to take images that are sharp throughout, but to always have that as your goal can really affect and limit your creativity. Often a scene or subject can benefit from some careful thought regarding which parts of it you would like to be sharp and in focus, and which parts you may want to appear slightly soft or out of focus. This technique can be used to make areas of interest in your image really stand out due to them being sharp and in focus. Also, the creative possibilities are great and a soft foreground or background may give your photograph a unique look and atmosphere. So next time you are out taking some images consider if whatever you are photographing should be sharp from front to back, or could the final image look better if parts of it are soft? If you’d like to hear me talk about this topic a bit more, and see me use this technique to capture an image, you can watch my video here.

Camera Settings for Photographing Birds in Flight + Canon 5D Mark IV and Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary Tips

Capturing nice images of birds in flight is a very rewarding experience. To capture good sharp images you need to use the correct settings on your camera and lens. I’ve created a video which covers all the camera settings you need to use for photographing birds in flight, I also gives some tips to help Canon users including taking advantage of custom settings and modifying Canon AF case settings. I also discuss the best settings for the Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary lens. You can watch here.