The Best Aperture for Landscape Photography

When it comes to selecting the best camera settings, the aperture is arguably the most important setting to get right since it significantly affects the look of your image. While there isn't a simple one-size-fits-all aperture you can use in 100% of your landscapes, there's one aperture in particular that's generally the best to use if the situation allows.

In landscape photography, we generally want to have as much in-focus as possible, so a higher aperture value (think f/22) will give us a greater depth of field and LESS bokeh (background blur).

But before you go setting your aperture to f/22, you need to understand the tradeoffs. These high aperture values mean the aperture blades of your lens are closed down, ultimately resulting in something called diffraction. This causes a loss of sharpness and images that don't look good.

For that reason, most landscape photographers opt to use an aperture between f/8 - f/11, which offers the best balance between a high depth of field AND optimal image sharpness.

Certain situations (low light or scenes that require a faster shutter speed) may require you to open up your aperture further, so I recommend playing around with the aperture and finding out when you're willing to compromise image sharpness, depth, or field to pick settings that may offer better exposure for your scene.

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