What do I need to know about hyperfocal distance focusing with the New Russar+?

Hyperfocal distance focusing is often used for landscape shots and street photography in which you would like all near and distant objects to stay sharp. Focusing your lens at the hyperfocal distance ensures maximum sharpness from half this distance all the way to infinity. Wide angle lenses such as the Russar+ have short focal lengths and therefore a deeper depth of field (depth of field is the range of the photo that is in focus). By setting the hyperfocal distance, you can maximize the depth of field in your picture.

Hyperfocal focusing can easily be used on lenses such as the Russar+ that have a depth of field indicator. It’s a great example of how the manual settings on the Russar+ can allow you to take real control of your shots.
On the Russar+, you can see markings that indicate what portion of the focus scale is in focus for a given aperture. Each aperture is marked twice when you look at the lens from the top.

Now you can set the infinity marking to the focus marking for your current aperture. After doing this everything from the distance indicated in the first marking up to infinity is in focus. So the first marking gives you a minimum distance that you need to keep from objects so that they are in focus. For example, by stopping down to f11 on the Russar+ and setting the lens to the hyper-focal distance, everything from 0.6m on will be in focus – pretty much everything on the focus scale is focused. For wider open apertures like 8 or 5.6 the focus range is still big.

Aperture set at 8. 1, focusing on foreground 2, focusing set at infinity 3, hyperfocal distancing focused

Discover the New Russar + lens and all our tips, tricks and advice.

written on 2014-04-09 in #lenses