What aperture should I use for landscape photography depth of field?

f/8 to f/11 is the usual landscape recommendation, and for good reason: it's narrow enough to bring the hyperfocal distance within a practical range at typical wide-angle focal lengths, while staying short of the point where diffraction visibly softens most sensors. There's no single universally correct number — the right aperture depends on your focal length, your nearest subject distance, and your sensor's resolution.

Why Not Just Use the Narrowest Aperture Available?

Diffraction sets a real practical ceiling: past a certain aperture — commonly somewhere in the f/11-f/16 range depending on sensor resolution — the sharpness lost to diffraction across the whole frame starts to outweigh the sharpness gained from extended depth of field. A 24mm lens at f/22 has more theoretical depth of field than the same lens at f/11, but the f/22 image is very likely to look softer overall once diffraction is accounted for, which defeats the purpose of stopping down in the first place.

How to Actually Choose, Rather Than Default

Work out your hyperfocal distance at a candidate aperture and check whether your nearest important foreground element sits beyond it — if it does, you likely don't need to stop down further at all. If your foreground sits closer than the hyperfocal near limit, narrow the aperture, switch to a wider focal length (which shortens the hyperfocal distance faster than narrowing aperture does), or consider focus stacking rather than pushing the aperture into visibly diffraction-limited territory.

Check your actual hyperfocal distance and near limit at any aperture in the DoF & Hyperfocal Calculator before assuming f/8 or f/11 is automatically right for your shot.