Best 5D3 Settings for Wide View Sharpness?

[RyanCrierie]

I like to shoot wide open views, like this of the Star Spangled Sailabration in Baltimore for this week:


F-314 Thor Heyerdahl Stern View by RyanCrierie, on Flickr

The above image has been processed in Photoshop CS5 with ACR 6.7 and Shadow/Highlighted to pull out 10% shadows, and then had the basic sharpen filter applied to it.

What basic settings are ideal for the 5D3 with kit lens for maximum sharpness with autofocus for such an...expansive subject?

Reason I'm asking the CanonRumorz hive mind is that I've found that the settings you choose on the in-camera menus have a big difference on quality, due to the complexity of the auto-focus system.

 

[bdunbar79]

My primary camera is the 5D Mark III. I leave sharpness setting at 1, everything else 0. Shoot RAW and with these settings, you'll see what I mean. Give it a try!

 

[JerryKnight]

The basic rule for sharp landscapes is to use a narrow aperture -- probably between f/8 and f/16, but if you go to f/22 or beyond, diffraction will probably start to blur details.

I'm not sure what you're worried about with the autofocus. In bright sunlight, it should be next to impossible to miss focus, or you could probably manual focus fairly easily. If you have a mix of foreground/background objects, use your depth of field preview button to check focus.

As with everything other kind of shot, it never hurts to bracket, bracket, bracket. Bracket your exposures, and bracket your focus. Your LCD screen won't be a good exposure indicator, so use your histograms as well.

If you use AEB, you could even experiment with basic HDR. The in-camera HDR is interesting, but not really meant for serious use.