Another Hyperfocal Question

[kena]

Nipped out from work this morning to catch the sunrise. It was extremely cold with a chill factor of about -10
Any way on this image I want to get the foreground in focus also.
Hand held. Canon 7d with 24-70L
Camera settings were as follows:
Focal length 70mm
F2.8
Iso 200
Shutter 1/500
By the time this was taken I couldn't feel my fingers and had difficulty changing settings. These settings were from a few minutes earlier when it was a lot darker.
I'm guessing I need to up the Iso, lower the shutter speed and set aperture around F8/F11.
I plan on going back to this location with my tripod and try again on sunday as the weather looks favourable.
Any help would be appreciated.

 

[TCR4x4]

I wouldnt up the ISO unless you have to.
I'd have shot at f/11 on aperture priority on the tripod and just let the camera decide the shutter based on metering from the foreground. Id have then used a ND grad to bring the sky into line with the exposure, as it would blow out otherwise.
Focus wise, I dont tend to use strict Hyperfocal, but I usualy just manualy focus 1/3 into the scene

 

[kena]

Cheers Tom. I didn't have much choice this morning as it was hand held. A few minutes earlier I was up to iso 1600 just to get the right exposure. I am a great believer in low iso levels where possible.

 

[HoppyUK]

Hyper focal distance focusing doesn't work so well at longer focal lengths, and 70mm on a 7D is quite long. Even at f/11 the nearest point of sharp focus would be 11m away.

 

[posiview]

Did a quick check with DORmaster and with your settings near limit is 28.9 meters with focus distance of 57.8 meters.

I'm trying to get my head around this as well...

Cheers.

 

[kena]

This is one taken a few minutes earlier with a shorter focal length ( 24mm) and everything is in focus. I've had a play on my DOF app. and I guess it's down to the longer focal length that I can't get the foreground in focus on the previous image.
What I don't like about this second image is it makes the mountains in the distance look a lot further away than they actually are, hence the longer focal length in the first image, which has them looking as they are to the naked eye.

 

[HoppyUK]

Wide angles exagerate perspective, because you tend to use them close to the subject. In other words, the background is made relatively much smaller than the background. DoF is all about magnification, and it's the fact that the distant background becomes relatively smaller that allows you to set the hyperfocal distance fairly close but still pull the background sharp without using massively high f/numbers, if you follow.

If you really need maximum range of DoF, focusing one-third in or one-third up or whatever, will miss out on a lot of potential foregound sharpness.

 

[Richard King]

In the top image, worrying about hyperfocal focus point is fairly irrelevant, as the lack of light in the lower half of the frame means even if things were in focus, it would still look exactly the same

Im always inclined with shots like this, at this time of day to ensure the horizon, or the meniscus between land and sky is pin sharp, and then process and/or expose the shot to ensure the muddy grey lower half is thrown to black

 

[woof woof]

Any help would be appreciated.

Leave it exactly as it is Or next time move backwards a bit as it wont make any real difference to the mountains.

 

[kena]

Leave it exactly as it is Or next time move backwards a bit as it wont make any real difference to the mountains.

I had thought about moving further back but was unable to do so. I was standing in 2 feet of snow and on a 45 deg embankment. The rocks would have obscured the mountains and sunrise if I had done this.