Ah, thanks for the expanded details, I think it help me understand even more now.
I am sorry Tom, if you think I am just too silly please ignore me. But I got a couple of questions (again) for you.
1) With your sample photos, is your AF point (or focus point) focused on the big tomb stone? (and then recompose) OR simply focus on the very point in the middle? (which is the sky just above the trees)??
2) Hyperfocal... not 100% sure what it means, but is that the number representing the distance (in both feet/meters) in the little window of my lens? (If so, it ends at 1 meter... then goes Infinity... would have thought even the closest object in most of the landscape photos would be more than a meter anyway... so in this case, my largely dumbed down version of your theory would work then?)