What is the hyperfocal distance at 24mm f/8 on full frame?

At 24mm, f/8, on a full-frame sensor, the hyperfocal distance is roughly 2.52 meters (8.3 feet), computed from full frame's real circle of confusion of 0.0288mm under the diagonal/1500 convention. Focus at that distance and everything from about 1.26 meters (4.1 feet) out to infinity reads as acceptably sharp.

Why This Specific Combination Gets Memorized

24mm f/8 is close to the most-cited hyperfocal number in landscape photography for a genuinely practical reason: it lands in a range a photographer can act on without measuring anything. A near limit around 1.26 meters is roughly an arm's length past where most people naturally stand from a foreground rock or plant, so "focus a bit past the nearest interesting thing" becomes a workable field habit rather than a number you have to look up mid-shoot. Longer focal lengths push that near limit out to a distance that's harder to eyeball, and wider apertures shrink the whole sharp zone enough that guessing gets risky — 24mm f/8 sits in the specific window where instinct and the actual math agree closely enough to trust.

What Changes This Number

A narrower aperture (f/11, f/16) shortens the hyperfocal distance further, at the cost of eventual diffraction softness. A wider aperture (f/5.6, f/4) lengthens it. Switching to a smaller sensor format shortens the real focal length needed for the same field of view, which changes this number independently of the circle-of-confusion effect — the two effects don't simply cancel, and the exact result depends on which sensor you're actually shooting.

For what each term in the underlying formula actually does, see how the hyperfocal formula works.

Get this figure for your own aperture, sensor and distance in the DoF & Hyperfocal Calculator, pre-filled with these exact settings.