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In S2E3 Sherlock faked his death in such a way that the only person who have seen it (from the right angle) was Dr. Watson. Other people present on the scene were actors (Molly and homeless people).
If I understand correctly, Moriarty had a sniper watching whether Sherlock will jump and that will act if he does not. But given the explanation of how Sherlock faked his death, it is obvious that the sniper would have seen that it was faked. So why did he trick Watson instead of the sniper?
As explained in S03E01,
Sherlock jumped down to the pavement, landing on an air pad with limited visibility (building blocking one side, shipping container blocking the other (Watson's angle).
Any sniper who was in position to kill Sherlock while he was on the roof had at best a 1/4 chance of being able to see Sherlock after he jumped - if he was on any of the other 3 sides of the building, the building would block him. It's kind of a tautology; in order for the sniper to be high enough to command the roof, he would be (in an urban environment) too high to command more than narrow channels of street level.
Consider this potential diagram to explain why it wasn't "obvious the sniper would have seen":
+---+ +---+
| !| | |
| | | S|*
+---+ +---+
Here, ! is the sniper, S is Sherlock, and * is the landing site on the street. When Sherlock leaps from the hospital building and falls, the hospital then blocks the view that the sniper has from the adjacent building.
And the overall deception plan relied upon Sherlock jumping. It's not like he had better options for dealing with the sniper.
This makes more sense in the stories than the show but generally Watson is a very poor liar. Hence if Holmes needs to lie or be dishonest he also has to dupe Watson (like in The Adventure of the Dying Detective). Hence to convince the world (and his enemies) he had to convince Watson as 'people' would be watching Watson closely to deduce any clues of Holmes still being alive.
Exactly how he tricked the sniper has not been revealed so we just have to trust that Holmes had it figured out. The fact that he is alive implies that he was right!
There was never a sniper watching Sherlock. The sniper's target was Watson. The targeting scope was squarely focused on Watson, so when he got the "go" order, he'd pull the trigger and instantly be done.
The sniper didn't hold off shooting because he saw that Sherlock was dead, he held off shooting because he received a message to not shoot. Just as all the other assassins in other parts of town were focused on their targets, not personally observing Holmes, and were getting their orders via phone messages, the same is true for the sniper.
Since the entire rest of the world, except for those involved in the ruse, all thought Sherlock was dead, whomever/whatever was monitoring was not in a position to see the charade.
Furthermore, though I'll have to recheck, but in order for the sniper to be concealed and in a position to shoot Watson, he'd probably have to be in the same building or same side of the street as Holmes, and not in a position to see, without sticking his head out of the window and giving away his location.
How he faked his death is never confirmed. What he told Anderson could very well be a lie, as Anderson points out. But Sherlock had to seem to fall in order to save everyone he cared for. The sniper was fooled too. John had to be fooled for his protection, as did everyone else. By his reaction, obviously Mycroft wasn't originally informed with the plan, though he's in on it soon after, keeping track on him as he shatters the spiders web. Molly somehow assisted him, likely assisting in the execution and identifying the body, then keeping him in her apartment for a short time.
While narrating to Anderson, he mentions that the snipers were taken care of by Mycroft and his men. He had to fake his own death so that he could go underground for two years and dismantle Moriarty's network.
The other two snipers were targeting other people at two other places, so they are not seeing Sherlock. The only one seeing Sherlock was the sniper targeting John. So as he was following John to kill him, he sees only what John sees, so the ambulance building blocks the view. He faked to John because for his own safety.
