I am told the wider the lens (10mm cf 100mm, for example) the deeper the depth of feild in the shot so I look at a landscape (say your standard seascape (land/foreground/ocean.skyline) and tell myself to go for a wide focal length lens and small apeture to ensure depth of feild and depth of focus too... right .. wrong.. well at least for me.

Assuming I have the notion right, that a wide angle lens (say a 10-22mm CF a 70-200mm) is going to give deeper depth of feild no matter what apeture you set on the camera, I go with the wide angle lens for landscapes. Then I tell myself okay set the Apeture at F 8 or F 11 or even F16 to promote end to end sharpness in the image, from foreground to background.. makes sense... so far so good right ?

Then I ask myself about focus points and thats where I get into confusion.

IF I use AUTOFOCUS on the Canon 50D the camera punches out 9 focus points ...BUT I am told in AUTOFOCUS mode the camera will reach for the NEAREST to the CAMERA focus point and focus on that.....leaving anything beyond that closest to the camera focus point NOT sharp, not focussed and crappy at the back.

So, I tell myself, use a manual focus point and either pick a focus point of the nine (the one in the middle mostly or if you want to be really picky a focus point covering your subject/centre of interest), but for landscapes there is no centre of interest, no specific individual one subject.... so then what ?

Am I confusing depth of feild with depth of focus. ..surely not.. thats the point of the DOF, to control the sharpness of the image and blur (deliberately) sections of the image (eg birding or portraits or in this case, lizards).

Ah someone says, for landscapes use a wide angle lens, camera apeture at F.8 - F16 and use Manual focus, setting the lens at infinity..hey presto, sharp back to front landscapes... really ? Is THAT it ?