Rufus,
Any photography.
First, you must remember that there will be only one (!) distance a lens can be focussed on 'simultaneously'.
Everything in front and behind that will be unsharp, no matter how 'acceptable' some people might think that unsharpness is.
Hyperfocal focussing does not look at the scene in front of the camera, does not decide what the main focal point of the scene is, nor how that relates to other parts of the scene.
It cannot decide
what should be sharp.
Instead, a couple of mathematical formulae are used to calculate what distance the lens should be set to to achieve maximum 'acceptable unsharpness' (the thing people call depth of field).
Whatever thing in the scene might be at the resulting distance is not even considered, but completely left to chance. It being the picture's main subject is highly unlikely (and that's an understatement).
So you end up with photos that do not have a definite main subject, or if they do, a main subject that is not in focus.
Though not strictly 'hyperfocal focussing', the technique usually also involves attempts to maximize the range of 'acceptable unsharpness'.
That involves stopping down the lens too: another way to squander what a good lens is capable of.
Yes, the range of 'acceptable unsharpness' will increase.
But with it, the maximum sharpness will decrease. (And with that, the difference between in and out of focus is decreased, seemingly increasing DOF even more. Now isn't that nice?!
)
Landscape photography is indeed the 'realm of hyperfocal focussing', though not exclusively so.
And indeed, many landscape photographs (try to) show everything 'in focus' (i.e. a level of being out of focus the photographer deemed acceptable, all in the cause of not having to choose a definite subject), from the daisies at the photographer's feet to the mountain tops in the far distance.
Not only a waste of a good lens, but usually boring beyond believe!
So there are two reasons not to get involved in the practice of hyperfocal focussing:
1) A technical one:
- the bits that are supposed to be inside DOF are not sharp;
- DOF is a fickle thing, not set in stone the moment you click the shutter, but still changing with print size and/or viewing distance, long after the aperture has been selected, and the hyperfocal distance set;
- the practice of increasing DOF to its maximum lowers the maximum sharpness a lens is capable of producing;
- true sharpness is assigned by formulae to somewhere and something, that will not be the thing you want to be truly sharp.
2) A creative one:
- Focus is a tool to direct attention to the subject of your photograph. Trying to get as much in focus as possible will tell the viewers of your photograph that you could not decide on a subject, or that you think everything is equally important.
- DOF is not a tool to get as much in focus as possible, but to define a relationship between your definite subject (the thing you will deliberately put in focus) and the rest of the scene. Stopping down or opening up the diaphragm changes the visual relationship significantly, providing a very important expressive tool.
Hyperfocal focussing ignores this completely, only trying to get as much in focus as possible, i.e. trying to make as much appear to be equally important as possible.
