DOF for landscapes

tashley wrote:

This brings up another issue, relating to the conventions of composing photographic landscapes. The 'Joe Cornish' school is that you have Foreground Interest (large wet rock) with Lead-In Lines directed towards the main subject, the landscape and sky. Often the Wet Rock is long and pointy and placed diagonally so as to act also as a Lead In. This is a very tough gig to get right, and often the result is more about demonstrating technical virtuosity rather than making a great image.

I got shown around an amazing art collection a couple weeks back with lots of traditional English and Dutch Landscapes and it was notable how few of these used the Cornish Convention. It's just not necessary, it has become a sort of fetish and I think it generally looks nasty too. But more importantly, it often leads to people focussing more on the foreground interest than on the subject itself. You more or less have to do this since blurred defined foreground objects are distracting but it has two serious downsides:

• The tail wags the dog - something you have included in order to create balance ends up dominating the frame AND the focus
• Foreground DOF is much shallower than distant DOF, making it often impossible to get both zones in full focus.

I quite certainly need a wide angle lens that 'does' sharp everywhere. But just because it can do that, doesn't mean that's how I generally use it. Foreground interest can be colour, texture, shade and light and all of these can work quite well without being in perfect focus.

just saying!