Focus point for landscape shots

Morning,

As a 'default' setting for landscape and streetscape shots, would I use A mode, aperture f11, and single point or multiple point focus?

Many thanks.

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I use single point focus for the situations you mentioned.

I'd use F8...especially for street shooting and that is assuming your somewhere around 30-50mm...you need to watch what your camera selects in terms of shutter speed too...that way you know how it (the camera) thinks...multi point AF is for if you have 8 kids in the same frame in my book...haha

Good analogy.

Originally Posted by RicardoMilano

Morning,

As a 'default' setting for landscape and streetscape shots, would I use A mode, aperture f11, and single point or multiple point focus?

Many thanks.

"I use single point focus for the situations you mentioned".

Am I missing something here? Would you not use multiple point focus for landscape and streetscape in order to have as much of the frame in focus as possible?

I pick the spot I want to be the center of the focus. I then use the aperture to control the depth of field to make as much or as little focus as I need. In a lot of landscapes you want a lot of depth of field so f/8 or f/11 gets you that as Jeff said.

As a rule of thumb, the focus point for landscape shots should be...infinity. If you're focusing on one thing in particular, I'm not sure you get the gist of landscape photography in the first place.

Originally Posted by Anthony Hereld

As a rule of thumb, the focus point for landscape shots should be...infinity. If you're focusing on one thing in particular, I'm not sure you get the gist of landscape photography in the first place.

I agree in the "old days" we always set focus on infinity for landscape. Not sure you can do that with the 5100 so you use a small aperture setting to get DOF.

Many landscape photographers have a cardinal rule of composition concerning landscapes...they tend to concentrate on one small part of the landscape a boulder or tree or some object in the foreground for instance and place the emphasis here. It helps to establish a structure for the picture and helps guide the eye around the landscape. So you have to be careful and use the right focal length and f stop when focusing at infinity if you are composing in this manner.

It is why landscape and street photography tends to be done with wide angle lenses...

As for the OP...I suppose you could have some sort of "default" personal setting like you suggest but I would say that the angle of the light because of the time of the day and season and location and the lens you are using is WAY more important than any setting...the settings for a good landscape shot are going to be so varied because of the light and the lens used that any default setting sort of becomes a moot point.