Hyperfocal Distance Calculator

Focus at the hyperfocal distance and everything from half that distance to infinity stays acceptably sharp. Enter your focal length and aperture, pick your sensor size so the circle of confusion is right, and this calculator returns the hyperfocal distance in metres and feet plus the near limit where sharpness begins.

Quick Answer

How to use this hyperfocal distance calculator

Enter the lens and aperture you actually plan to shoot, pick the preset that matches your sensor, and read the focus distance off the result. The whole job takes four steps.

1. Focal length: type the millimetres printed on the lens barrel, or the exact setting on a zoom. On a zoom, set the ring first and read the number off it, because 24 mm and 28 mm give very different answers.
2. Aperture: enter the f-number as a plain number, 11 for f/11. Pick the aperture you will shoot at, not the widest the lens offers.
3. Sensor size: choose full-frame, APS-C or Micro Four Thirds and the circle of confusion is set for you. Pick Custom CoC only when you have a specific value in mind, for example 0.020 mm for critical large prints.
4. Focus at the answer: set focus to the hyperfocal distance H using the lens scale, live-view magnification on an object at that distance, or a tape measure for close values. If you need to pace out or measure that focus distance in the field, a plain distance calculator handles the unit conversions. Everything from H ÷ 2 to infinity is then acceptably sharp.

One behaviour worth knowing before you rely on it: the Custom CoC box is read only when the sensor dropdown says Custom CoC. Leave a value typed in that box with a preset selected and the tool ignores it, which the parity tests for this page confirm.

The hyperfocal formula, including the focal-length term

The formula is H = f² ÷ (N × c) + f: square the focal length, divide by the aperture f-number multiplied by the circle of confusion, then add one focal length, with every length in millimetres. Divide the result by 1,000 for metres.

There is a simpler form of the same formula that drops the last term: H = f² ÷ (N × c). The added term is one focal length, because the exact definition measures from the lens’s front principal plane, a point the simpler form quietly treats as the film plane. This calculator uses the precise form with the + f term, the form most dedicated hyperfocal calculators use, and it says so here rather than letting you find out from a rival’s numbers. The simpler form is the one printed in most textbooks and used to engrave lens depth-of-field scales. The Cambridge in Colour tutorial on hyperfocal distance works through the geometry behind both forms. Here is what the choice costs on real setups, with the approximation column computed by hand from the same inputs:

Read the pattern, not just the rows: the gap equals one focal length, so it matters most on short lenses stopped well down, the exact corner where the 14 mm row sits, and it shrinks to nothing on telephotos. Even the worst row here, 14 mm at 3.43%, is a 14 mm focusing error at a 0.4 m focus distance, inside what your hands and the lens scale can set anyway. If a chart or lens scale gives you the approximation instead, add the focal length in metres to compare it with this tool’s answer. The thin-lens geometry behind both forms is the same geometry that governs focus at close range, where the image distance calculator solves the companion lens equation.

Worked example: 35 mm at f/11 on full-frame

A landscape frame with rocks in the near foreground and a ridge on the horizon needs sharpness at both ends (the horizon distance calculator tells you how far that ridge really is). Every number below is this calculator’s own output for the pre-filled inputs.

• H = 35² ÷ (11 × 0.030) + 35 = 1,225 ÷ 0.33 + 35 = 3,747.1 mm = 3.747 m (12.29 ft)
• Focus at 3.747 m
• Near sharpness limit = 3.747 ÷ 2 = 1.874 m (6.15 ft)
• Far limit: infinity, by definition of focusing at H

Change only the sensor preset and the same lens at the same aperture tells a different story, because the circle of confusion shrinks:

That table is the single most useful thing on this page. A photographer who memorised full-frame hyperfocal charts and switched to a crop body would focus a full 2.1 m too close with the same lens, and the far end of the frame would pay for it.

What the circle of confusion is, and why your sensor sets it

The circle of confusion is the largest blur spot on the sensor that a viewer still reads as a sharp point at a normal viewing distance. It is a perceptual limit, not a physical constant, and it is the one input most photographers do not know offhand, which is why this tool presets it.

A point of light that misses the focus plane lands on the sensor as a small disc instead of a dot. Below the circle-of-confusion size, nobody can tell the disc from a dot in a normal print; above it, the softness shows. Smaller sensors enlarge their images more to reach the same print size, so their discs get magnified more and the acceptable disc has to start smaller: about 0.030 mm on full-frame, 0.019 mm on APS-C and 0.015 mm on Micro Four Thirds. Canon publishes its own permissible circle of confusion definition for its lenses, and the long-running technical treatment by Norman Koren in his depth of field and diffraction tutorial derives the front and rear depth-of-field limits from the same definition. Two practical consequences:

• Big prints and pixel-peeping need a smaller CoC. If you print large or inspect at 100%, pick Custom CoC and use something like 0.020 mm on full-frame. The tool will hand you a longer, safer hyperfocal distance.
• Cropping after the fact tightens the CoC too. A heavy crop is extra enlargement, so a frame you plan to crop deserves the stricter value as well.

Stopping down shortens H, until diffraction takes it back

Each stop down divides the hyperfocal distance by the same factor as the f-number rises, because H is inversely proportional to N. On the worked-example lens, the run down the aperture ring looks like this, every row a verified run of this tool:

The temptation is to keep going to f/22 for an even shorter H. Resist it past the point your scene actually needs: diffraction softens the entire frame at very small apertures, and Canon’s own guide to hyperfocal focusing gives the same advice, suggesting f/16 or even f/11 in place of a lens’s minimum aperture for the sharpest result. If you want the light side of the same trade-off, the aperture area calculator shows how the physical opening, and with it the light gathered, shrinks at each stop.

When hyperfocal focusing is the wrong tool

Hyperfocal focus maximises the depth of field you have; it does not create depth of field you do not have, and it is the wrong answer in three common situations.

• Nothing near needs to be sharp. If your nearest subject sits well beyond H ÷ 2, focusing at H wastes sharpness behind infinity that was never at risk. Focus on the subject instead and both ends improve.
• Portraits and subject isolation. The whole point of a fast lens wide open is a thin sharp zone. Hyperfocal technique is built for the opposite goal.
• Macro and very close work. At close distances the hyperfocal distance collapses toward the lens and depth of field is measured in millimetres. Focus stacking, not a focus distance, is the fix there.

What competing calculators miss

The top results for this keyword split into tools that compute more than you asked for and tools that compute it wrong:

• FIRGELLI hyperfocal calculator: the strongest rival, with the precise + f formula, extra modes for near and far limits and a visualiser. Its cost is friction: the circle of confusion is a hand-typed field, so the one number casual photographers do not know is the one number it demands before anything works.
• CalculatorDoc: publishes a formula with a subject-distance term, H = FL² ÷ (CoC × F − s), which is not the hyperfocal formula at all. Its own worked example returns a hyperfocal distance of −2.50 mm, a negative focus distance, and presents it as a scenario quirk instead of a broken tool.
• BraveCalculator: uses the standard approximation without the + f term, and again asks you to supply the circle of confusion yourself, with the sensor values buried in the how-to text instead of sitting on the tool as presets.
• NumberAnalytics guide: teaches H = f² ÷ (N × CoC) as the manual method with no tool attached, a useful reminder that the field itself is split on the + f term; this page resolves the split by using the precise form and showing both numbers.
• The gap this page fills: sensor presets on the tool itself, the focus distance and the near limit stated as the headline result in metres and feet, and an open account of which formula form is being used and what it costs.

Frequently asked questions

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References