White balance and contrast are important, too.

For white balance, choosing a “shade” or “cloudy” preset helps the maintain the primary colors Putting the white balance on Auto + 1 / +2 / +3 helps, too. It’s counter-intuitive, but in reality, blue light is warmer than red light. In the fall, when there is more shade, red light is more abundant. If using a Circular Polarizing filter, set the filter first, then set the white balance. The filter can play tug of war with the white balance setting.

The contrast is important, too. Contrast is another picture control which can be set incrementally on most DSLRs. Tweaking the contrast lower can prevent radioactive shiners often found in hiking shots. Nikon’s Active D-Lighting works great for balancing out the contrast, too without having to post-process in Photoshop. Pushing the ISO to increase shutter speed usually results in a noisier picture with a thinner depth of field than one would want for a landscape shot.

A monopod or tripod works wonders. Even with a monopod, it’s possible to keep the ISO down at 100 or 200, either by limiting the Auto ISO or setting it yourself. Then, if it’s a DX-format camera, doubling the focal length will give you a good shutter speed (example: 50mm = 1/100th of a sec) and usually the aperature will fall between F-5.6 and F-11 where most lenses produce their sharpest results.

I’ve found it’s usually better to over-expose the shot by 1/3EV or 2/3EV to eliminate any excessive bright shots, like sun breaking through clouds and tree cover on an otherwise cloudy day. That way, once you get the shot home and onto the computer, it’s easy to make a slight correct to the fill-light for the entire picture instead of having to burn in the really bright spots.