SeaYoda
Contributor
I decided to hit Morrison for a cool dip in this hot weather so I loaded the Jeep and got there about 08:00. Gate was open and only one vehicle in the park with two divers gearing up. The water was a nice shade of blue and the level was below the two big trees on the beach (about normal when there is not a drought or flooding). I could see the platform clearly from the surface. The water clarity on the dive was not the best I've seen but pretty good. From the platform you could just make out the other side of the basin.
The mission today was to test the hyperfocal calculations for my E-330. There is a website that you can plug your type of camera / aperture / focal length / subject distance and it will calculate your depth of field and give you a hyperfocal distance. I figured I would try the wide end of my lens so I manually set it at 14 mm. I would not be doing long exposures so I opened the aperture to 2.8 and set the iso at 200 (not supposed to have much more noise than 100). The calculated hyperfocal distance for my settings was 15.2 feet. The lens has no markings between 3 feet and infinity so I had set the focus to auto - paced off 15 feet and focused a shot. I switched to manual focus without changing anything so it was locked at that distance. Below are the less than stellar results. There is no focus point at all and there should be focus from 8 feet to infinity. Even if my paces were off, there should be a pretty good zone of focus somewhere in the picture. My guess is two things may individually or combined be affecting the focus. First, the calculator is for air not the magnification of the water. The dome port should correct the magnification but may be the second source of the problem. The dome makes a virtual image that the camera focuses on. This image is within a foot of the camera so maybe I can't use the hyperfocal calculator for this virtual image.
The mission today was to test the hyperfocal calculations for my E-330. There is a website that you can plug your type of camera / aperture / focal length / subject distance and it will calculate your depth of field and give you a hyperfocal distance. I figured I would try the wide end of my lens so I manually set it at 14 mm. I would not be doing long exposures so I opened the aperture to 2.8 and set the iso at 200 (not supposed to have much more noise than 100). The calculated hyperfocal distance for my settings was 15.2 feet. The lens has no markings between 3 feet and infinity so I had set the focus to auto - paced off 15 feet and focused a shot. I switched to manual focus without changing anything so it was locked at that distance. Below are the less than stellar results. There is no focus point at all and there should be focus from 8 feet to infinity. Even if my paces were off, there should be a pretty good zone of focus somewhere in the picture. My guess is two things may individually or combined be affecting the focus. First, the calculator is for air not the magnification of the water. The dome port should correct the magnification but may be the second source of the problem. The dome makes a virtual image that the camera focuses on. This image is within a foot of the camera so maybe I can't use the hyperfocal calculator for this virtual image.