Would Ansel Adams Have Gone Digital? 455
Roland Piquepaille writes "After viewing photographs by Christopher Burkett, which are not digitally manipulated, Peter Lewis wondered what place have digital cameras and image manipulations in the art of photography. And a question hit his mind. If Ansel Adams, one of the most famous photographers of the 20th century, was still alive, would have he gone digital? Lewis talked at great length with Richard LoPinto, vice president for SLR camera systems at Nikon Inc. to find an answer. And guess what? LoPinto thinks Ansel Adams would have loved digital cameras. The article also discusses digital camera resolution and the future for film camera sales. This overview contains more details and a small photograph by Christopher Burkett."
Hard to say..this guy though definitely would have (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Anyone ever talk to Ansel Adams? (Score:3, Informative)
Having monchrome would eliminate the need of heavy image processing, like interpolation: getting RGB pixels for each pixel which is either R, G or B. In fact, thinking about it, I cannot wait to be able to buy digital SLR with monochrome backs...
Try again (Score:5, Informative)
200 to 1000 megapixels for ASA 50 film in that size.
Re:Try again : Done !!! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm
It is done with a Canon D60 6 MPixels DSLR and PTAssembler + PanoramaTools, two great freeware and easy to use tools.
http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm
Don't forget to check the others pictures in "Max Lyons Digital Image Gallery"
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/
Re:Try again : Done !!! (Score:3, Interesting)
It would help if the camera were mounted on a rigid frame and moved rapidly between images by accurate motors. You could probably ge
Re:Anyone ever talk to Ansel Adams? (Score:5, Insightful)
50 megapixel would also be pretty grainy at the large prints adams liked to make. A 2 megapixel doing a 4x6 print would be the same resolution as a 50 megapixel doing a 20x30 print. 20x30 is a typical size for adams, and a 2 megapixel is just barely tolerable at 4x6.
The other side is creative control over the chemicals. We're talking about digital manipulation but analog manipulation has existed as long as chemical photography has. Ansel Adams was a master of that and I doubt he'd give up the techniques he spent a lifetime learning.
Besides the obvious darkroom stuff, film has interesting quirks. A 1 minute exposure is not 60 times effective as a 1 second exposure on real film. How will a CCD behave; in Adams style of photography, long exposures are common.
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Anyone ever talk to Ansel Adams? (Score:3, Interesting)
Having chemical controls vs. access to level, saturation and brightness is almost the same. He could have mastered the digital techinques easily. Think about
Re:Anyone ever talk to Ansel Adams? (Score:5, Informative)
This is exactly why I said long exposures are common in Adams style of photography. Small arperture means larger depth of field, and for landscape you want the DoF to be maximized.
My point is that film has an inverse saturation curve that is somewhat unique for each kind of film. Adams was skilled to the point where he had an intuitive feel for how the films he used would react. How does a CCD react to a long (several minutes) exposure? Does the charge bleed off and it behaves sort of like film? Does it bleed into other pixels and fog the whole image? Is it perfectly stable and a 10 minute exposure is a 5 minute exposure + 1EV?
If even you're right about the pixel count (and I tend to believe you because of lack of trust of the hardware makers), you're only arguing that this special 50MP camera would be as good as Adams sheet film. Where is the advantage? Why should he abandon a simple (cheap) box that costs a few dollars (today's value) per exposure in favour of something that is arguable just as good, but costs more than he made in his lifetime? It's not like he needed to take lots of shots; his pictuers were well planned out and took a long time to take each one.
Maybe the digital would have made him take lots more pictures and spend less time on each. Then instead of hundreds of truly great works of art, he might have taken tens of thousands of mediocre snapshots.
I really don't understand this digital push. It's good for photojournalists who care more about getting the picture to their publisher as fast as possible than image quality or whether the picture will be useful in 50 years. It's also good for people learning to take pictures so they can get some instant feedback and take lots of pictures to experiment.
But for most people film is still better. A typical person who shoots 5-10 rolls a year on vacations and at parties will find that digital has a much higher per-shot cost over the lifetime of the camera; a $300 digital gives comperable features and feel to a $30 P&S film camera. At 5-10 rolls/year you will never recoup those costs over the life of the camera.
As far as quality, you might argue that a $3000 digital is comparable to film, but the $300 digital is definately inferior to film. So for the typical person, digital costs more per shot and gives inferior quality. Where is the advantage?
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Anyone ever talk to Ansel Adams? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, most people who shot 5-10 rolls a year with their classic camera, tend to shoot 500-1000 pictures (ie. 25-50 rolls) of digital pictures, an
Re:Anyone ever talk to Ansel Adams? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hard to say..this guy though definitely would h (Score:5, Informative)
Adams' main contribution to photographic technology was his 'Zone' exposure system, which combines exposure, development and printing into a single system. It was like a very early ColorSync (even if it was in black and white).
Photography before f64 and the Photo-Secession was only considered 'art' if it was manipulated. Most Victorian photographic art was sacherinely allegorical. When photographers such as Weston and Adams came onto the scene, their images were considered shockingly raw.
To suggest that Adams was somehow considered a fraud would be to misconstrue the history of photography.
Re:Hard to say..this guy though definitely would h (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not suggesting that his photos would be altered (though the amount of dodging and burning he did came pretty close to that) but that he could experiment with different ways of "developing" a single shot.
Re:Hard to say..this guy though definitely would h (Score:3, Interesting)
This is very true. Adams employed the Zone system throughout the photographic process from exposure and developing of the film to printing on paper. He published a great book called Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs which goes into great detail on how each of 40 of his most well-known images were produced. In many cases he descri
An Environmentalist will choose digital (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An Environmentalist will choose digital (Score:5, Informative)
Compare this to the chemicals used to produce the sensor in a digital camera. Just a tiny bit of hydroflouric acid will do more damage to the environment than the silver from all the film you'll probably ever use.
Re:An Environmentalist will choose digital (Score:2)
Not using fixer when you process black and white film is like not using fire in an internal combustion engine. The reaction is short-lived and not all that useful.
Re:An Environmentalist will choose digital (Score:2)
Re:An Environmentalist will choose digital (Score:3, Informative)
Anyways, semiconductor process chemicals are treated (at least in Europe / North America, and they're getting better than they used to be in India, Taiwan, etc). HF is easily neutralized. Look at the environmental permitting [epa.gov] at Intel's [intel.com] fab 12 in Arizona - waste discharge is a huge issue; they don't just dump
Re:An Environmentalist will choose digital (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, XTOL is based on vitamin-C as a developing agent.
The reason Adams like HC-110 at very high dilutions is that it reduces the solvent effect during development resulting in high acutance and therefore very sharp negatives. This will also increase grain, but since he was shooting large format, the grain isn't much of an issue.
pyro is really nasty stuff, but can produce wonderful negatives. Edward Weston was a big user of pyro developers and it is believe that they contributed significant to his parkinson's disease.
Re:An Environmentalist will choose digital (Score:3, Insightful)
Beyond this, making those pictures took a long time and the results were very fragile. As he was going into unspoiled areas, toting all the supplies for his work must have been a burden he'd have gladly given up for a couple of professional level digital cameras, a solar recharger, and some rugged storage media.
Plus, can you imagine how disappointed he was every time he climbed back down off some prec
Re:An Environmentalist will choose digital (Score:2, Interesting)
Really? Are you sure you don't mean John Muir?
Adams used to set up his camera on the hood or roof of his BIG Cadillac (I realize that an 8x10 system weighs alot, but c'mon). But I think painting Adams as environmentalist is a bit of a stretch.
Ansel Adams was above all an artist.
Re:An Environmentalist will choose digital (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Have you looked into a Google search for the beginnings of the Sierra Club? Why do you think that one of the larger wilderness areas in the Sierra Nevada is named The Ansel Adams Wilderness?
Was there an alternative to the Cadillac with the platform on the roof? You want to take an 8x10 view camera into the hills, that's what you do. It's not like he was using it for vanity, like the current posers who b
Re:An Environmentalist will choose digital (Score:2)
Analog Cameras Have Them Too (Score:2)
My uncle studied under Adams (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My uncle studied under Adams (Score:2, Funny)
Prints (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prints (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Prints (Score:2)
That made me think about ownership as well. The legal owner of traditional photos can prove it with the negatives. How can you prove ownership of a digital image? There are watermarks but that detracts from the image.
Re:Prints (Score:2)
Although I agree that some will stick with the old stuff.
Possible data point: My sort-of uncle* is a famous photographer, Lee Friedlander. He carries his 35mm camera everywhere, and takes candid shots at family get-togethers. Occasionally a family member will get a print, but it will have a hand-written copyright notice on it, and I'm sure that the negatives are squirreled away somewhere safe.
Re:Prints (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll just say that a true professional uses whatever tools are most appropriate for the job. If it's digital, it's digital. If it's analog, it's analog. Different photographers (or professionals in any field, really) do get used to working a certain way, and learn various tricks and techniques that they fear won't transfer over to a new medium, but it just then becomes a case where the advantages need to outweigh the hardship involved in learning a new system.
I don't think any true pro like Ansel Adams would be blindly loyal to one camera format or another (and that's all digital is; just another format in the grand scheme of things). If he didn't want to change, it wouldn't be because he was some sort of "die-hard" that refused to embrace new technology. It would only be because he didn't believe the advantages in the new format (convenience, ease of use, lightness of the equipment - which can be a big deal to a pro photographer) yet outweighed the disadvantages (lower resolution, lower sensitivity, less accurate color reproduction) or the difficulty in learning how to do the things you know how to do in one format on another.
In other words, it would only be because he felt that digital had not yet reached the quality of film - which is still true. But as digital improves, it's catching up fairly rapidly, and eventually I think he would have made the switch as will most current pros. I would bet that most pro landscape photographers already carry around a little point and shoot digital camera when they are not on formal shoots - as small and light as digital cameras are these days, and as good as the quality's getting, there's really no reason for a true photographer to ever be without one anymore. You never know when a great shot is going to present itself, and you're not always going to have your large-format film camera with you to capture it.
(Of course, a point and shoot film camera is just as small and light, but I do think in that segment of the market digital really pretty much has gotten to the point where the convenience eclipses any lingering resolution or color accuracy issues, and I think a lot of photographers are starting to realize that. A 5 megapixel point and shoot is good enough for the purposes of capturing quick shots that you'd otherwise miss, and with no worrying about running out of film or whether you actually got the shot afterwards.)
Re:Prints (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not to say that digital is not here and is not high quality - I'd nearly die for a digital SLR; I am saying that somebody who believes he'd adopt digital photography anywhere near the form of what it is today does not understand the topic.
Re:Prints (Score:4, Interesting)
Ansel Adams would not use digital in its current form for any of his work. Ansel did use 8x10" large format for most of his career, but later in life when he could no longer hike with his 8x10" view camera and enormous surveyors tripod, he used 6x6cm Hassleblad systems.
There are many other advantages to using sheet film above and beyond the incredible resolution it provides. If you've ever read his book, "The Negative", you would see that much of his workflow depended on using sheet film. The "zone system", which he developed, only fully applies to B&W Sheet film emulsions. This involves shooting mutliple sheets of film at the same exposure setting, and developing each one differently to control contrast (N+1, N-1, etc) - see Chapter 10 of "The Negative."
Also, the dynamic range of B&W emulsions is worlds beyond what *any* digital capture can currently achieve. Ansel's books discuss capturing, in the final print, 11 different zones of tonality (Zones 0-10). Sorry, digital simply cannot do that. Period. It is a fact of physics that cannot be disputed.
This was the main reason why Ansel never did much with color (he dabbled with Kodachrome in the 1940s but didn't like the lack of tonal control it gave you - something slide film shares with digital, only digital suffers from it more severely).
Of course, all of this ignores the use of view camera movements that Ansel employed (tilt, shift, rise, draw, etc). Correcting perspective with the lens is no match for what can be done in Photoshop, since the latter method forces you to sacrafice resolution.
I'm not anti-digital by any means. It is indeed at the point of matching 35mm quality-wise, if not pricewise in the next few years (the one digital SLR that truly matches most film is the Canon 10Ds, which will set you back about 8 thousand dollars). However, to suggest that Ansel, who worked with large format B&W, would be using digital today only expressed incredible ignorance of B&W vs Digital issues, Ansel Adams' exacting standards, or more likely both. Dismiss it as marketoid speech.
Digital Camera that uses SLR Lenses? (Score:2)
Everything from super-wide-angle to "count nosehairs from 1km away"
It'd be really cool to have a digital camera that could make use of all these standardized (?) lenses.
Anybody got a source?
DG
Re:Digital Camera that uses SLR Lenses? (Score:5, Informative)
From $900 to about $10k you can get a SLR digital camera. I've had my Canon D60 since March of 2002, it was $2199 when I bought it.
6MP, and uses Canon's entire EOS line of lenses.
Nikon has the D100 which is the D60's equiv, (now replaced by the 10D) and then th D1's from Nikon and 1D's (several models depending on your needs)
Re:Digital Camera that uses SLR Lenses? (Score:2)
Sure the (key word) old F mount lenses and the (key word) old Canon FX mounts do not work. But they don't work on the latest film cameras, or in the case of canon any film camera produced in the last, oh, 10 - 15 years.
As for the field multiplication effect. I'm not a professional, I'm a Dad who got tired of developing film. Wih my D60's 1.6x crop I use my 28-135MM lens and have never *notice
Re:Digital Camera that uses SLR Lenses? (Score:2)
Re:Digital Camera that uses SLR Lenses? (Score:2)
Re:Digital Camera that uses SLR Lenses? (Score:2)
Everything from super-wide-angle to "count nosehairs from 1km away"
It'd be really cool to have a digital camera that could make use of all these standardized (?) lenses.
Anybody got a source?
Nikon's Digital SLR cameras will accept F-mount lenses and use them just fine, albeit with automatic features disabled.
Would Ansel Adams Have Gone Digital? (Score:2, Funny)
Of course not. He didn't even go color.
Re:Would Ansel Adams Have Gone Digital? (Score:4, Informative)
Of course not. He didn't even go color.
Wrong-o. Ansel Adams did much of his commercial work in color and even has a book of his color landscapes available on Amazon
Ansel Adams in Color, ISBN 0821219804, Bulfinch Press 1993.
Here's [amazon.com]
a color landscape that's on the cover of that very book.
Re:Would Ansel Adams Have Gone Digital? (Score:2)
No freaking way (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone has seen Adams coffee table books, but one has only to stand in front of an actual Adams print to see that there is a quality to his prints that cannot be reproduced by even the highest quality methods of reproduction. Even if you're jaded by overexposure to Adams books and calendars (as I am), it is breathtaking to see his work in person.
Richard LoPinto is trying to sell digital SLRs for Nikon. Frankly, I think it is a disrespect for him to speculate that Adams would have anything to do with a digital camera, or any digital process.
Re:No freaking way (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No freaking way (Score:2, Interesting)
Adams was a very good artist, but a consumate craftsman and did much to advance the science of B&W image making. Some of his prints (Prints he made) don't do much for me as far as subject, but in his hands were executed to printing's highest art. He's often quoted as saying that t
Re:No freaking way (Score:2)
Okay, I'll say this: If there was such a think as a 10gigapixel digital camera back that could do 128-bit or better images, oh and an output method that didn't blow, he might have used it. And I'm sure such things will one day exist. But would Adams use the digital technology that exists today? I really don't think so.
Peopl
Re:No freaking way (Score:2)
I should have qualified my statement however. I am in the end confident that digital technology
He used Polaroid (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he would have gone digital.
Bruce
Re:He used Polaroid (Score:4, Informative)
Adams was also a careful archivist. He would have been, at the very least, concerned about preserving his work (the negatives or thier equivalent) for the future which as we all know, is a problem of digitally stored works.
He would have cautiously experimented with it, I think.
Edward Weston on the other hand, burned his negatives when he wanted to "clean out"; he would have gone digital for sure.
Ansel was a scientist. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Ansel would have loved to test out the digital cameras and make observations on how the digital camera matched up with film cameras in different situations.
You make an excellent point (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you seen the picture of his enlarger that had something like 20 lightbulbs in an arry in the lighthouse with each one of them brought out to a toggle switch? The sort of mind that builds such a device could only be enthused about digitial technology.
An even more interesting question would be how he would create his prints. I suspect he would have a Lightjet printer, though the new inkjets with grayscale inks might have been interesting to him.
One of Ansel's most interesting quotes was to the question "what kind of camera should I get" His response was "the biggest one you can carry." He used 8x10 view cameras in his prime, but had no regrets using the Hasselblad system in his older years. If you translate "biggest" into "the highest resolution and dynamic range", there would be no problem with using a digital camera
Re:Ansel was a scientist. (Score:5, Interesting)
Adams' books were NOT about the technology of the process. Technology was completely secondary to the issue. Adams was primarily interested in "previsualization." You see a scene you'd like to photograph, you previsiualize how you want the picture to turn out, and only THEN do you consider what technology (i.e. what lens & settings, what film speed, what developing) is necessary to produce the image you've previsualized.
heh, my mistake (Score:4, Funny)
He would have, but... (Score:5, Informative)
A 10-megapixel image is nice and all, but Adams used everything up to 8x10 cameras, and there's nothing like that kind of resolution even in the planning stages for digital. He certainly would have used digitals for his "small" works.
For big landscapes? no.
For example, a 4x5 using Velvia color film is in the 200 megapixel range, and the 8x10 would be closer to the gigapixel category using 25 ASA black and white...
Oh, Great . . . Re:He would have, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Stefan
Re:He would have, but... (Score:2)
Re:He would have, but... (Score:2)
I have some 275ASA shots on 35mm I had blown up to poster size that are utterly fantastic, and are impossible to do with any digital camera made today in the same clarity and resolution.
same as with the other end of the scale... some 1600 speed film that has been hypered up to 3200 speed. capture images in the night and/or night sky that are also 100% impossible with digital.
digital is great for many things, it's resolution is still very f
Re:He would have, but... (Score:2)
ISO 1600 on a pro digital camera has far less grain than ISO 1600 film.
Of course, grain isn't the only consideration, but it is one of the problems with high-speed film.
Chris
Re:He would have, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:He would have, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
A 22-megapixel image [sinar.ch] is even nicer [Warning: PDF], and more and more professional photographers are switching to digital because of the advantages of end-to-end digital image processing. There still are some restrictions in high-end digital photography that make its use outside of the studio difficult or impossible, but it's matter of time and these will be overcome.
Ten years ago, most people laughed at digital photography. Today, consumer digicams are selling like hotcakes and the professionals are definitely listening, if they haven't catched on yet. Ten years from now, photography will be digital. There will still be some uses for traditional film-based photography, but it will be a niche market. And somewhere on this planet, the next Ansel Adams will buy his first digital camera and use it in creative ways the designers hadn't anticipated. Yes, Ansel Adams was an artist and a hacker in the original sense of the word in my opinion.
Another thing: no matter how big or fine-grained the film is, remember that the lens has to be able to resolve more lpi than the film, otherwise the film's resolution is wasted.
Oh, for the love of Pete. (Score:5, Insightful)
"At great length?"
And while waiting for the perfect shot, he'd enjoy an cool, refreshing Coca-Cola(tm)!
Give me a break, people. This was a puff piece.
Re:Oh, for the love of Pete. (Score:3, Informative)
Adams' darkroom == analog photoshop (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who claims that photography is about objectively and accurately portraying the real scene knows very little about the nonlinear properties of human vision, film, and image reproduction systems and they know even less about art.
Re:Adams' darkroom == analog photoshop (Score:3, Interesting)
Its not the medium, its the artist (Score:5, Insightful)
Ansel spent countless hours in the darkroom to "manipulate" his pictures. THat included choosing print paper type, exposure time, dodging (making an area lighter or darker) and the list goes on and on. If he had had a digital camera to match the resolution of his film camera, he would probably have been overjoyed. However, it seems that neither Canon or Kodak with their 13 and 15 megapixel cameras have come close to the resolution of the large negative cameras, so Ansel would probably still be using film!
The Digital Darkroom (Score:5, Insightful)
"He manipulated the work tremendously in the darkroom. He always said that the negative is the equivalent of the composer's score and the print is the equivalent of the conductor's performance, and the same piece of Mozart is conducted differently, performed differently, by different orchestras, different conductors, and Ansel performed his own negatives differently.
I could only imagine what Ansel Adams could do with Photoshop!
Ansel Adams was about control (Score:5, Insightful)
Although, he would love the post processing ability of photoshop to manipulate faint details in a image, I think he would have been very unhappy about the limited dynamic range of digital.
I think he would have still used film for the contrast control not present in digital. Once digital cameras are developed with better contrast control he would begin to use them.
Christopher Burkett didn't manipulate his photos? (Score:4, Informative)
I quote: "When I work with Cibachrome, I often utilize unique masking and printing techniques to adjust the contrast, sharpness, brightness levels, and relative weight of tones and colors."
His photos are great regardless of whether the subject actually looked like it does in the photo.
Re:Christopher Burkett didn't manipulate his photo (Score:2)
For me, the biggest thing holding me back from digital is that full-frame SLRs are still WAY too expensive for me to afford the upfront cost. I'm really into wide-angle photography, and full-frame is the only way to go. When full-frame SLR costs come down, that'll be one of the biggest remaining barriers left
Source of the Opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Ansel Adams is well known for large format very high resolution imagery; I doubut he would have achieved the same results with today's cutting edge equipment.
Digitally Manipulated (Score:2)
Christopher Burkett doesn't need to manipulate pictures of nature, but portrait photographers often need to manipulate their shots to present the images of people the way those people think of themselves.
When you take a few pounds of weight off your subject without their knowledge (or you soften some wrinkles), and they dearly love that picture, but they dislike another similar picture that wa
Absolutely yes and no (Score:3, Interesting)
Were he to use a digital camera, he probably would have had fork over huge amounts of cash to get a medium format digital back -- Ansel was a huge fan of quality, and 14megapixels just doesn't cut it for the type of work he was doing. But when he shot a scene I could see him making many different shots with various exposures and then merged them back in in photoshop.
Output, though. He probably would have had to hit up one of Epson's 7700s -- those large format printers. I don't know if he would have liked the digital printing in comparison to his darkroom silver prints.
So I guess what it really comes down to is he would have loved the control of digital, but I don't believe the quality is quite yet. Or perhaps it is and I just can't afford it.
This article was a giant advertisement (Score:3, Insightful)
End of story, begin ad copy.
And that leads to the hypothetical question, which Nikon digital camera would Ansel Adams use?
"Considering his typical tendency to use high-quality, large-format cameras and his desire that it be handy and convenient, I suspect he would be attracted to our D100, for its size and versatility and overall digital image quality."
And it goes on and on like that. Gross. If I wanted advertisements posing as stories I'd go read Gamespy reviews.
Always a place for older artforms (Score:3, Interesting)
There will always be a place for these older technologies. Even if the mainstream has passed them by, the great artist will find themselves drawn to one form over another, even if it is not the latest nor the greatest. I recall one photographer that still shoots using glass frames over film. I know of many independent movies shot on Super8 or even 16mm film, when several studios are shifting away from 35mm to digital or IMAX technology. These forms will not just up and dissapear, they will always be there. An anacronism, perhaps, but one to be cherished even today.
Ansel would be sooooooo digital (Score:2)
Ansel wasn't a conservative artist - he was an innovator. He'd have been pushing the vendors harder and harder to improve their products.
I have no doubt at all that he'd have been totally captivated by digital and using combinations of digital an analog.
Oh come on! (Score:2)
Was he using daguerrotype?
No, he was using the best tech available at the time, and he would be using the best tech available today if he were alive and well today (as opposed to alive, but old, decrepit and senile).
So the real question should be: Is digital better than film?
And no, I didn't RTFA.
Using famous names to attract attention to our lil' articles is not something that will draw me in...
Re:Oh come on! (Score:2)
After you find the answer to that, please tell us whether vi or emacs is better. Then answer the *BSD vs Linux dilemma.
He used what was best to produce the results he wanted. The large format landscapes he did cannot be reproduced with today's best digital cameras. But he probably did other work, too.
Re:Oh come on! (Score:2)
Good question.
The answer is: No. It's not even close for the kind of work AA did. His technology (large format film) and hand-tweaked processing is still the best available for doing poster-size, amazingly high quality prints with stunning contrast.
End of story. I mean I like digital for snapping photos of friends, but really... Does anyone really believe digital is good enough to capture this [anseladams.com]?
Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Ansel Adams would not have adopted digital film, yet. Look at a full print of one of his photos. They were amazingly sharp. The man loved detail like no other. Digital photography does not yet provide the level of detail that Adams would have required.
Similarly todays outdoor photographers still commonly use large and medium format cameras using (in the case of color) films like Fuji Velvia (RVP 50), etc. These films deliver, IMO, a level of saturation that digital has yet to produce. It is close, but not there. Professional digital systems are beautiful, but in my opinion do not deliver the beauty of a professional analog print.
That said, some professionals are very good at what they do and their pictures rival the film pictures of the other 98% of us.
-Sean
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
All modern telescopes switched to solid state detectors for imaging. That's you who does not know what he is talking about.
probably not (Score:2)
8x10 digital camera backs, maybe (Score:3, Interesting)
Moreover, I suspect he'd look at digital in the same way he did colour. He spent much of his career in a love/hate relationship with colour film and printing, and a good part of that is that he never had the time to get as proficient with it as he wanted (or considered necessary).
For fine art, digital is still in its pre-infancy--Daguerrotypes were a more able medium in many ways. In fact, one of the major differences between film and digital is that from almost day one, film has been capable of capturing depth and detail on a level that digital isn't even close to.
Nonetheless, Adams would be carrying and using digital for some things right now, and mercilessly riding the manufacturers to improve the technology. For fine art though, I don't see it for at least another half decade.
Ansel Adams Used a Great Many Formats. (Score:4, Interesting)
View, for example, Monolith, The Face of Half Dome [coolantarctica.com] in person and of a print that Adams himself made, and you see a tonality and level of detail that modern science has yet to be able to create digitally, at least in a form available to a consumer. That is not to say that it cannot or will not be done, because in my opinion it is a matter of time before digital surpasses ANY film. Nevertheless, that day is still in the future, at least in regards to a piece of 4X5 or 8X10 sheet film.
Beaumont Newhall narrated Larry Dawson's 1957 film, Ansel Adams, Photographer, and described Adams's photographic gear:
"...A fine craftsman employs different tools for different purposes. Item: one 8 x 10 view camera, 20 holders, 4 lenses -- 1 Cooke Convertible, 1 ten-inch Wide Field Ektar, 1 9-inch Dagor, one 6-3/4-inch Wollensak wide angle. Item: one 7 x 17 special panorama camera with a Protar 13-1/2-inch lens and five holders. Item: one 4 x 5 view camera, 6 lenses -- 12-inch Collinear, 8-1/2 Apo[chromatic] Lentar, 9-1/4 Apo[chromatic] Tessar, 4-inch Wide Field Ektar, Dallmeyer [...] telephoto.
"Item: One Hasselblad camera outfit with 38, 60, 80, 135, & 200 millimeter lenses. Item: One Koniflex 35 millimeter camera. Item: 2 Polaroid cameras. Item: 3 exposure meters. One SEI, and two Westons -- in case he drops one.
"Item: Filters for each camera. K1, K2, minus blue, G, X1, A, C5 &B, F, 85B, 85C, light balancing, series 81 and 82. Two tripods: one light, one heavy. Lens brush, stopwatch, level, thermometer, focusing magnifier, focusing cloth, hyperlight strobe portrait outfit, 200 feet of cable, special storage box for film.
[Ansel's car (a Cadillac) with platform pulls away from camera.]
"Item: One ancient, eight-passenger limousine with 5 x 9-foot camera platform on top."
Who cares if Ansel Adams would go digital! (Score:4, Insightful)
The simple truth is that he was a product of his time and that time was glass and emulsion. Yes thats right, glass. He started out shooting as someone who has hung Ansel Adams work in a photos on glass plates. Later he changed technologies and shot on the flexible film we all use today. Ultimately his time has past.
Were Ansel Adams alive today he might be creating art in code as many of us are doing now. He might be working with neural nets or a network of wifi nodes and location aware technology.
One might just as pointlessly ponder whether or not he would be producing Marxist institutional critique or gender based work.
To suggest that he would like digital photography is pointless. If he were alive today producing the same work he did in the 40's (no matter how beautiful) in any format we would say he was irrelevant and anachronistic.
Next up... Raphael loves Photoshop, Rembrandt digs Python and the Bauhaus goes over to OSX.
signifier-signified
www.34n118w.net
mining the urban landscape
If they were alive... (Score:2)
If Jimi Hendrix, one of the most famous and influental blues-based rock guitarists of the 20th century, was still alive, would he use digital effects?
It's stuff like this that initiate hours upon hours of philosophical banter in real life, and page after page of trolling and flamewars online
A camera is a tool... (Score:2)
Artists like any other profession like to expand their skills.. Ansel Adams created beautiful images with his cameras... why should it have mattered how the image is created... be it manipulation of light on film or manipulation of pixels on a screen..
It's the finished product that ultimately matters to the artist.
He would have gone Near IR Digital. (Score:2)
Comments from a professional (Score:4, Insightful)
For people currently learning to shoot, go with digital. It's a much better way to learn. My father (who used to teach at Nikon School) says he would have learned to shoot in 1/4 the time.
Hasselblad, with a Kodak DCS back (and film!) (Score:2)
Remember, he was one of the founders of f/64, the whole point of which was the revolutionary idea that Pictures should be tack sharp. (Quite unfashionable at the time)
He'd defintely have a very good scanner and printer, and a current workstation with Photoshop. He spent as much time in the darkroom as he did taki
The Print's The Thing (Score:2)
I doubt he would have "loved" digital (Score:2)
Digital photography certainly has its advantages, but when it comes to creating truly beautiful photos film is still the best medium
Luddites United! (Score:2, Informative)
If someday digital can match the dynamic range and resolution of silver prints, then I may reconsider. Until then, Luddites Unite!
I think Ansel would have loved digital! (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, the film showed him walking out of his darkroom with a test strip, tearing it off along the edge of a table and microwaving the photo (yes, microwaving it!) to get it to dry faster. Given some of the results I have seen in the hands of talented photographers who have worked hard in digital, I have a feeling Mr. Adams would have gotten behind it too.
One final thought: many of you have talked about 35mm size digital cameras as being the high end of digital photography. NOT TRUE. There are any number of high-end makers of extremely high resolution camera backs for medium format and large format cameras, including view cameras like the 4X5" Sinar. These are the staple of many advertising photo studios today. Please know that in many cases, the CCD (and most likely, CMOS) backs do not have the same size image area as the film they replace, and consequently, the lens focal length is changed. But Sinar, for example, offer a set of view camera lenses specifically or digital photography, and there are battery-powered digital backs for medium and large-format cameras for location use and nature photography. In fact, these have been around for at least 5 years.
In short, never say never. I don't think Ansel ever did.
He would have loved the digital cameras but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
And mathing image, negative and print was what the zone system that ansel adamsn developed and used was good for.
So I suppose he would have used old fashioned photographic processes after all.
This is not to say that digital photography have no value. Most photographers doesn't have the time or assistants to produce the fine quality prints like Ansel Adams did for his exhibitions, and for them digigal photograpy is j
ust fine.
Yes (Score:2)
Re:If he did... (Score:2, Informative)
Ah, if (Score:2)
NEWS FLASH! (Score:2, Funny)
In other news, Generalissimo Franco is still dead.
Re:Ansel would have loved Photoshop (Score:2)
A big part of the f64 club was that whatever was infront of the lens and therefore captured on the film was what was printed, no cropping or other fiddling. Incidentally, very small aperatures mean big depths of field (handy in landscapes) but does not improve sharpness. An out of focus or camera-shake blurred picture will be out of focus or blurred no matter how small your aperature. Sharpness is also a function of film speed, low speed means small grain and therefore sharp whereas high speed means larg
Re:Of course he would love digital cameras..... (Score:3, Informative)