Nigel Danson
Pro landscape photographer Nigel is a long-term Nikon user and currently uses a Z 7II for stills and a Z 6II for video. The duo is supported by three lenses, the 14-30mm, 24-120mm and 70200mm. On location he also takes a drone and a Benro Mach 3 tripod.
Nigel started his YouTube channel six years ago after a near-fatal car accident in Yosemite National Park; he now has 436k subscribers and new videos are posted every Sunday. www.nigeldanson.com
There’s so much more to picture sharpness than using lenses at their best apertures, so I’ll start by saying that people get carried away with sharpness and don’t concentrate enough on composition, telling a story, the light and all the other things that make a great image.
The equipment and how many megapixels you have is obviously key. If you define sharpness by how large you can print an image then megapixels are important. It’s less critical if you define sharpness by how good it looks onscreen. I took the sunrise shot shown here 16 years ago on the Nikon D200 and it is sharp and just 10.2MP.
What is important is lens quality. If you want the sharpest image, a prime lens will give better quality compared with a zoom. I have a 50mm f/1.8 and if I took a shot at f/5.6 and did the same at 50mm on my Nikon Z 24-120mm, the 50mm prime will definitely be sharper. But the 24-120mm is versatile, and the ability to get the shot and tell the story matters.
You should also understand the characteristics of your lenses. For instance, if you are shooting a lone tree across a valley with a 100mm lens, you’re better off on most current lenses shooting at f/4 rather than f/8 or f/11 because modern lenses are best at wider settings and get less sharp as they are stopped down.
Then it comes down to how you use your equipment. In an early morning shoot the shutter may be 1/2sec or slower, so you need to have the camera on a tripod, and then there are techniques around that.
Nikon cameras have an exposure delay mode which takes the picture a set time after the shutter release has been pressed. I use it to avoid camera shake; on other brands you can use the self-timer.
A big mistake many tripod users make is pressing the shutter button for a one-second exposure, but by doing that they are shaking the camera. It is easily avoided by using a timer or wireless remote.
One technique I employ when I am shooting around 1/15sec is using the touchscreen monitor to take the shot.
With seascapes accurate timing is essential and this method means you can time the shot and be precise with focusing, which brings me on to one element of photography that I see a lot of people struggling with, depth of field.
Most of the time in scenics you want everything sharp, so depth of field control is key.
I understand depth of field and the characteristics of my lenses. I know if I shoot at 24mm at f/10 everything is sharp if I focus at a certain point. A good tip is to use an app like PhotoPills that tells you the depth of field for your camera and focal length at a given aperture when focused at a certain point.
A really useful technique that I use a lot is focus stacking. Often, I’m using a wide lens so that means there’s more in focus in the first place but if I stack, I will take two shots to merge in Photoshop. If I am unsure then I will take shots focused on the foreground, midground and background so I have all the essential data.
Advanced focus modes are important with subjects such as wildlife. With landscapes I use single spot AF and manually pick where I am going to focus.
In editing, I think people get carried away and apply too much sharpening and that creates an artificially sharp image. Use a little sharpening in post but don’t overdo it.