A Landscape Shooter’s Guide to Back Button Focus and Hyperfocal Distance

Want to learn how to shoot tack-sharp landscape photos? Photographer Dave Morrow made this solid 27-minute guide that teaches his personal focusing strategy. He believes it’s the “most in-depth guide to back button focus and hyperfocal distance currently on YouTube.”

Back button autofocus allows you to separate your focusing from your shutter button, moving it to a dedicated button on the back of your camera. We’ve shared some guides on this strategy over the past few years.

Hyperfocal distance is “the closest distance at which a lens can be focused while keeping objects at infinity acceptably sharp.” This allows you to achieve the greatest depth of field and maximize sharpness for objects that are both near and far in the scene.

Morrow has also written up a great tutorial on depth of field that pairs nicely with this video.