Focusing

I compare two approaches:

1. Traditional focusing where the film and lens plane are parallel leveraging the depth of field proportional to aperture so that the near and far subjects are in focus.
2. Tilt to focus on the plane of sharp focus which passes through the near and far subjects.  

The diagrams below demonstrate each technique:

Traditional Focusing

I set the aperture of my 150mm lens to f/64; I focused on the plant on the edge of the patio which coincided with the hyperfocal distance of 3.553 meters.  Everything from 176.5cm to 29.2km should be in focus.

Tilt Focus

In this shot I positioned the plane of focus to go through the plant on the edge of the patio and the maple behind.  I tilted the lens 12 degrees so the that plane ran about 75cm under the lens.

Traditional focusing techniques may be simpler; they certainly are more familiar.  However, not every lens can stop down enough to get both near and far in focus.  For my 150mm I needed to set the aperture to f/64 and a correspondingly long exposure.  As one will notice, on this mildly breezy day motion blur can be seen in the leaves of the trees.  

Tilt focusing introduces some complications; or at least until the technique becomes familiar. Like traditional focusing techniques the depth of field lies on either side of the plane of sharp focus.  However, when the lens is tilted so is the plane of sharp focus.  Thus the depth of field projects along the plane and perpendicular to it.  The second diagram shows this by highlighting the areas in focus.