Earlier today I came across a question someone asked about “typical landscape photography settings.” I think their goal was to determine whether to make settings manually or automate them, what sort of initial settings might be useful, what techniques might be employed in typical situations, and so on. That covers a lot of ground, and there is a ton of room for variation depending on your goals and idea of what landscape photography is and is not.

In fact, at first the question seemed so broad and general that I wasn’t going to reply. However, rather than ignoring the question, I decided to offer a quick summary of some of the general techniques I may employ when making a landscape photograph. And since I had already written it I thought it might be useful to share it here, too.

(Of course, I have to acknowledge that this doesn’t address the most important things about landscape photography, namely how to approach the landscape, how to “see” the landscape as an esthetic subject, and how to go beyond mere technique to focus on the image itself and what it can express. That is another post. Or chapter. Or book. Or two. Or more.)

So, on to the short “answer,” or at least to my reply…

Everyone has their own approach to landscape photography, but most folks I know photograph landscape using manual settings and manually focusing using live view. My typical starting point includes the following:

1. Camera on tripod, with remote release attached.
2. Camera in manual mode with AF and IS turned off. ISO starting point is almost always at 100, though I’ll increase this if necessary.
3. Most often I do my initial composition through the optical viewfinder of my DSLR, perhaps manually focusing quickly so that I can see the scene well enough to make compositional decisions.
4. If depth of field (DOF) isn’t an issue — let’s say the subject is far away and without any close foreground — I’m most likely to select an aperture that will give me good resolution across the frame. This means avoiding the smallest apertures (since they increase diffraction blur) and the largest apertures (since they can decrease resolution near the edge and may increase vignetting). In general the aperture might be in the range of f/8, though that can vary depending upon the lens. (I shoot full frame, and your apertures might be a bit larger if you shoot a smaller format.) If I need less DOF I might choose a larger aperture as needed, or if I need more DOF I’ll choose a smaller aperture up to about f/16. (I rarely stop down to f/22, though there are occasions when the slight loss of maximum sharpness is worth it.)
5. In most cases I’ll switch to live view mode at this point. Since the live view display on my camera shows the frame boundaries more accurately I will do final tune up of the composition here. (I especially like the option to show the 4:3 aspect ratio boundaries in live view on my Canon 5Ds R since that is my preferred ratio.)
6. I use a combination of the plus/minus exposure readout (often used for exposure compensation settings) at the bottom of the LCD and the RGB histogram display to make decisions about shutter speed. Depending on the nature of the scene, I do not simply use the meter derived settings, and I may depart from them for various reasons that I won’t try to explain here right. Almost all exposure changes are made by modifying the shutter speed, since changing aperture affects sharpness and DOF and changing ISO (too much) could also make IQ decrease. (In truth, you can use a higher ISO if you need to with good results — and if I have a shutter speed issue as a result of ISO 100 settings I’ll raise ISO a bit. And sometimes shutter speed is important for landscape — if the subject is moving and if you want or don’t want motion blur.)
7. I use live view mode for manual focus — I virtually never use auto focus (AF) for landscape photography and I don’t do critical focusing in the viewfinder. (I save AF for other types of photography.) In live view I select an element of the scene that I think is likely to be a primary focus point, considering its role in the composition and its distance relationship to other scene elements. I zoom in on that element using the 16x magnification setting and manually focus on it.
8. If I have DOF issues to think about I remain zoomed in to 16x for the next step. With exposure simulation enabled I press the DOF preview button and use the joystick controller to move the display around to different areas of the scene, directly checking the focus effect of my aperture choice. (This helps me select the ideal hyperfocal point based on its actual effect on elements of the scene. It also lets me check my assumptions about aperture and DOF directly.)
9.  I’m now ready to make an exposure. If the scene is a relatively static one and the light is good this is a quick process. If things are moving (clouds, shadows, subjects in the scene, etc) this may take longer and I may make multiple exposures in order to have more to choose from later on. I’m not averse to making safety shots, so I’ll usually make more than one exposure, and I might try additional exposures at different settings if I think they could be useful.
10. In some cases, for example scenes with very close and very far subjects and/or when using longer focal lengths, I may do a bit of quick focus bracketing “just in case,” focusing a bit closer and further away than the ideal more-or-less hyperfocal distance. In some cases this turns out to be useful in post, where I can combine images to get better overall focus.
11. Out of habit I sometimes still bracket, especially in scenes with very large spans between highlights and shadows. These days this is more of an insurance policy than a necessity and I rarely resort to blending exposures in post.

Finally, there is no one way to shoot landscape. I don’t have any problems if you or anyone else prefers a different approach. But since the someone asked… there you go.

Question? Comments? Leave them below.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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