How do I ensure sharpness on Fuji X-T2

Hello everyone,

Hope you are all doing fantastic.

This video is another Fujifilm X-T2 tutorial. I want to address a question asked by one of my viewers. He wanted to know how do I ensure sharpness on my Fujifilm X-T2, especially when I have foreground objects. I think my technique can be boiled down to the following:

1. Tripod. A good tripod is crucial to landscape photography since most of the time you probably would shoot in sunrise or sunset, meaning you are shooting in low light with long exposures. If you shoot long exposures handheld, it is going to guarantee blurry photos. In order to remove camera shake and get sharp results, I always carry a tripod with me when I go out to shoot landscape photos. I also use the built-in timer or a remote control to trigger the shutter so that I don't need to touch the camera.

2. Aperture. Aperture is important since it controls the depth of field. A large aperture means a small depth of field and a small aperture means a greater depth of field. When shooting landscape photography, in order to get both foreground and background in focus, I most shoot with a small aperture. However, that doesn't mean you should always go with f/22 or f/16, since after a certain point, diffraction kicks in and reduce sharpness. On my Fuji X-T2, I usually shoot between f/5.6 - f/8.

3. Focusing technique. I set my Fujifilm X-T2 to manual focus mode and use back button focusing technique. I started with the largest aperture available and focus on the foreground object. Then I reduce the size of the aperture to around f/5.6 or f/8 depending on the scene. Then I check if the background is in focus. If it is not in focus, then I slowly turn the focusing ring and focus towards the background until the background is in focus and sharp. Now I check if my foreground is in focus sharp. If it is, then I take the photo. If it is not, I probably need to use a technique called focusing stacking, which is to capture multiple photos and focus on different part of the scene in each photo, then in post processing combine the sharp area from each photo together to make a single image. However, with Fuji X-T2, I found I don't need to do focus stacking as often as I did with Nikon full frame cameras.

4. Always review your photos after capture to make sure your photos are sharp.

Focus Peaking video:    • Fujifilm X-T2: Focus Peaking makes Manual ...  

Additional Info

-- Gear I use --
Fujifilm X-T2: http://amzn.to/2E2nzSk
Fujifilm 10-24mm f/4: http://amzn.to/2E3QC8g
Fujifilm 55-200mm: http://amzn.to/2E6bqMs
Rokinon 12mm f/2: http://amzn.to/2DGMJsh
Rode VideoMicro: http://amzn.to/2DDPqHM
Benro tripod: http://amzn.to/2GaI9Rt

-- My websites --
Main website: http://www.mingcaiphotos.com
Facebook:   / mcaiphotos  
Instagram:   / mingcai_photos  

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