What does 'f8 and be there' mean?

I'm pretty sure this is the saying my old teacher from highshchool used to

say. I know that f8 is a pretty good fstop for sharpness, but what does

the 'be there' mean?

F8 is often the optimal setting for lens sharpness and in normal outdoor conditions allows wide depth of field (meaning most things will be in focus) for a standard to wide angle lens. On many of the old Zeiss cameras the aperture setting of 8 was in red, so if you set your camera that way you were pretty certain that you would get a decent shot, as long as your shutter speed allowed you to use the camera at 1/30th of a second or faster, to avoid camera shake. Remember a lot of the old cameras were zone focusers, so there was an element of guess work anyway.

 

Ya gotta be there for the shot, or none of the above will matter :).

It means if you're not there when a photographic scene evolves, you can't take a photo of it.

"be there"(by sticking to f/8) also may mean stick to a self restricting domain. As is the case with most pedantic way of thinking!

 

Vivek.

f/8 is a very varsatile/balanced aperture for 35mm. It typically compensates well for lens aberrations, doesn't introduce much diffraction, gives a decent depth-of-field and leaves enough shutter speed.

 

be there (probably) means that you have to be "there" (where the picture needs to be taken) for anything to happen - another way of saying that fondling your equipment won't create any picture, or that taking a great picture doesn't happen by chance, you may need planning, patience, and luck.

This is an old expression from photojournalism on how to take good news photographs. The gist of the statement is that the photographer's presence at a news event is more important than the technical considerations for covering events.

I have a question (maybe an ignorant one). If f/8 gives great depth of field and focus, what does increasingly smaller apertures do (f/16, 22, 32, 45, etc.)?

 

Thanks,

Steve

Smaller aperture = progressively greater depth of field and focus.

 

I think I've read that the old-time news photogs used zone focusing with their Speed Graphics, and presumably shot at smaller apertures than f/8. That would make sense, because DOF (for any aperture) is less in 4 x 5 than in small formats, and those old flashbulbs put out a lot of photons. Is there anyone here who's used a Graphic for live news work?

"Can We Use the Smallest Aperture to Yield Greater Depth of Field?

Unfortunately, the answer is "no." As the light rays passing the lens tube and the diaphragm, some may be diffracted ... If the diaphragm is large (i.e., a large aperture), because the proportion of the diffracted light and the non-diffracted light is so small and is negligible, diffraction does not contribute to the loss-of-quality very much. However, when the diaphragm is small (i.e., a small aperture), the amount of light that can pass through the diaphragm is reduced and hence the proportion of the diffracted and non-diffracted light becomes significant. As a result, the quality of the image is also reduced. Therefore, closing the diaphragm (i.e., using small apertures) all the way down to the smallest aperture may not increase the quality of an image. In general, the quality of a lens increases as diaphragm closes down. This improvement will reach certain point. After this, quality goes down because of the impact of diffraction."

 

I found the above explanation on the net--a good test of this is trying a macro lens, stopped down to very small apertures. It usually doesn't work well.

Okay. So does f/8 in 35mm correlate to s smaller aperture in medium format? For instance, if f/8 in 35mm comperable to something like f/16, f/22, etc. in medium format?

 

Conversely, does f/8 in medium format correlate to a smaller aperture in 35mm, such as f/5.6 ro 3.5?

 

Thanks again,

Steve

No. Apeture measurement is how many times the width of the "hole" it takes to reach from the hole to the film plane. So, F/8 means that the film plane is 8 times what the width of the hole is. This means its scalable from subminature cameras up to gigantic view cameras. I imagine f/8 is "best" due to some laws of physics, not just chance. This is also why only fixed lenses of short focal length (like, 50mm) can have such huge apetures as 1.4, as the hole is very close to the film; and likewise, zoom lenses are often slower than fixed lenses because due to the nature of the beast (I remember hearing they often have up to 16 elements) the apeture hole has to be somewhat far away form the film plane.

 

Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Of course, aperture has an r in it. silly me.

Sorry, you're wrong. The f number is a fraction: it means the aperture is that fractional part of the focal length of the lens. For a symmetrical 100mm lens, f/8 means it has a 12.5mm aperture.

 

For reasons which are probably obvious, f/8 means a constant light intensity, irrespective of the focal length of the lens. It isn't related to the back focus distance, which I think is what you're describing.

And another thing, re Steve's question. The relationship between aperture and depth of field is not completely simple. It also involves the focal length of the lens, and the acceptable size of what's called the 'circle of confusion' on the film. You can read about these variables in optics FAQs on the Web.

 

For practical purposes, the size of the acceptable circle of confusion is usually taken to increase linearly with the size of the film. But for a given aperture, the depth of field decreases with something like the square of the focal length of the lens. So there's a net loss of DOF in larger formats.

 

What this means is that if you're shooting at f/8 using a normal lens on 35mm, you'll get roughly comparable DOF at f/11 with a normal lens on 120 film, or f/16 with the normal lens for 4 x 5.

And another thing, re Terry's post, of course he and I are saying the same thing. The distance from the aperture hole to the film plane, like he says, is pretty much the focal length, given a symmetrical lens. (My mistake, sorry. Brain not firin' on all cylinders today.)

As somebody already said, this phrase comes from the old-time press photogs who used Speed Graphics and Graflexes.

 

But I think the recommendation of f/8 isn't primarily an exposure or DOF issue. It actually comes from using the old-style bulb flashes: with the slow films of the time (remember that new-in-the-late-30s Plus-X was considered blindingly fast at ASA 64!), the correct exposure for a shot using flashbulbs for subjects in the 6- to 12-foot distance range was around 1/30 (or maybe 1/50) at f/8. And at f/8 with the lenses of the time, you could also zone-focus pretty well for that entire focus range by leaving it set for 8 feet. If you could grab the shot at exactly the right instant, you were reasonably assured of a printable negative...

 

It surely was a different world, having to *get it* in a single shot!

It's from the olden days when people actually used to focus lenses with their fingers. At

f/8 and a preset middle-distance, you simply needed to handle the composition (and in

even older cameras, the shutter speed).

I thought 1930's Master Photographer "WeeGee" typically shot at 1/200 at either f/8 or f/11.

Z, I have EOS gear and only use AF about 25% of the time.

 

There are a lot of others like me, and many who shoot cameras with NO AF! Even today.

1 - Bulb flash sync speeds were slower, because the bulbs didn't fire anywhere near as fast as electronic flashes - once burning, they took a good fraction of a second (1/20?) to come up to full brightness. Thus, flash shots at speeds above 1/50 were uncommon, as they'd completely miss the illumination.

 

2 - Put me down as another guy who has never used autofocus equipment(other than in point&shoots belonging to other family members).

Michael, actually bulb sync speeds are usually faster, just timed differently, at least on focal plane shutters, because the flash duration is longer. The electronic sync speed is limited to speeds at which the shutter is fully open, rather than a passing slit, but with an "FP" bulb, this limitation is not there. With the right flashbulb, even my old Nikon F will sync all the way to 1/1000. When I was a kid, I had a leaf-shutter TLR and any shutter speed limitation was due to the brightness (or lack thereof) of the flash, not the sync speed.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had an electronic flash (not nessecerily strobe) that had a peak long enough to allow the full transit of the focal plane shutter like the old FP bulbs? It's "fill flash" that exposes the deficiencies of modern FP cameras; strobe flash at 1/20 - 1/30 (fully open shutter) has a short enough duration to cover movement in most flash situations. How about some sort of 'pulse flash" that kept flashing during the full shutter excursion?

Harry: what you're describing is Canon's (and Nikon's) high-speed flash sync.

I use it as a joke, when I can't seem to decide what aperture to use (and I am very knowledgable about optics, but once in a while I do unusual shots that make it hard to choose the "best" f#) Funny thing is it seems to bring me good luck... some of my best shots. I say to myself "oh well... f/8 and be there" and sure enough I am (there) maybe it just gives me more confidence?