DOF for landscapes

What you describe is somewhat similar to what one faced when shooting 4x5 film. There isn't one solution to fit all landscapes. You have to taylor your solution to the image. The image below was shot with a D800E and a Schneider 210mm f/5.6 APO. I think I shot it at f/8, but it might have been f/11.

The focus point was on the rocks with the tunnel. I allowed the grass to go out-of-focus because its detail was not that important to the image. The rocks in the background were OK being less than perfectly sharp because that went well with the fog and accentuated the foreground rocks. This image looks excellent at 20x30".

Generally, you want the center of interest to be in sharpest focus. However, having large out-of-focus objects in the foreground is rarely desirable.

I think what you describe about the D700 vs. D800 is more psychological than real. When you only had the D700, you found its resolution acceptable. Now that you have seen the acuity that can be achieved in a D800 image you are not as happy when it is sacrificed with diffraction. There is no way that an f/16 image with a D700 will produce a sharper image than f/16 on a D800.

Approach the DOF problem with all the tools you can. Tilt-shift lenses work well in some situations. Focus stacking works well if things are static. Super-wide lenses are sometimes useful, but they tend to include closer objects which overcome their greater DOF. Also, they limit the shots you can do. The above image would have been uninteresting at 14mm. It really needed the 210mm.

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Robin Casady
http://www.robincasady.com/Photo/index.html