How Does John Shaw Get Away with 35mm

[hugh_sakols]

I've learned an quite a bit from John Shaws books and have always

admired his photos. However, at times I wonder how he has survived

using 35mm. Is this because he make most of his money just from

books and magazine shots?

[cgo]

I do hope that publishing has been good to John - his books have been good to me.

 

As far as his choice of tools, one has to keep in mind that the camera is only one part of the total assembly - the user of the tool is more important than the tool itself ...

[efusco]

Same way Galen Rowell and Frans Lanting and Moose Peterson and any number of other serious pro nature photogs do--good technique, fine grain film, top notch gear and lenses and careful shot selection. I dunno how 35mm has gotten such a bad name. At normal viewing distances with modern film and equipment (and esp. with digital scanning and printing) a well done 35mm slide will easily hold up to a 50" enlargement at standard viewing distances.

 

There will be nay sayers on that point. I suggest going to a couple of these guys' galleries and look at what they hang on the wall and decide for yourself.

 

You simply can beat the speed, flexibility, convenience, lens selection, weight factors, etc. that 35mm offers over MF or LF for most nature photography situations. Sure, those huge transparencies are nice and better when you can get them, but show me a MF camera that can buzz of 8 frames per second maintaining continuous AF of a bird in flight or that you can throw in a backpack and carry up a mountain wall. Without extreme difficulty it is simply not reasonable to even try.

--evan

[daniel_bergmann1]

Mr. Shaw is in the business of making money from his images

through stock. Shooting 35mm is the most cost-efficient way of

doing that. Films like Velvia and ProviaF are sharp and fine

grained enough to be accepted for publication in the 35mm

format.

[dennis__skip__higgins]

I've often heard many of the most learned and gifted of the craft discuss the technical aspects of 35mm lens construction and glass grinding/production. Their slant on the issue is such that given the size of the resulting 35mm original, the actual lens used on a 35mm camera is required to be of superior construction or, at the least, superior in optical performance, to that of MF and larger cameras. Though the quality of 35mm use lenses varies from maker to maker and also between models from the same manufacture - AND perhaps because there is such competition among them at any given focal length, I believe there is truth to this.

[m._huber]

Most of his subjects, type of shots, method of shooting and choice of accessories lend themselves to 35mm format. Also, improved film produces some mighty fine reproduction quality slides as compared to just 20 years ago.

[m._huber]

I don't think I can improve macro shots taken with my 645, but for versatility, choice of lenses, and back packing in the field, I opt for 35mm.

[hugh_sakols]

I did not post this question to criticize John Shaw's work in any

way. I'm new to medium format and am still deciding what

works best for me. I'm an amerature and rarely submit anything

for publication (nor have I ever got anything published). What

really gives me satisfaction is projecting my images on the

screen. I recently bought a Kindermann 66 projector and really

see no difference between the images projected with this and

my kodak 35 mm projector. However, I do enjoy looking at large

transparencies on the light table. Thanks for all of your

feedback. I live in a town of 600 and know few others to discuss

this with.

[john lehman, college alask]

Daniel Bergmann's comment I think hits the nail on the head. A professional photographer (e.g. one who does photography to make money) uses the tool which gives salable performance with the least cost; only an amateur can afford to produce unnecessary quality :-) Of course, for some pictures (e.g. grizzlies, flying birds) using medium or large format is not technically feasible

[lee_shively]

Most of us learned a lot from John Shaw, beginning with his first book in the mid 80's. Over the years, he has mentioned in some of his books that his equipment includes not only the Nikons he has always used but (horror of horrors) a Canon EOS 1, medium format view camera and panorama camera. Maybe others I don't remember. All good tools.

 

His emphasis has always been on 35mm, however, and you will probably notice most of the photographers responding in photo.net also emphasize 35mm in their work. It's a format that excels at everything. You can put a 35mm camera on a tripod with a tilt-shift lens and have virtually the same control as an 8X10 camera without the size/weight hassle. Next week, you can take the same 35mm camera with another lens, strap it around your neck and photograph a war in a foreign country.

 

I've used 35mm, medium format and large format cameras and I keep coming back to 35mm as my preferred format because it just plain does everything well.

[ShunCheung]

In Carmel, California (on the Pacific coast near Montaray, about an hour and half drive from Silicon Valley), there are a lot of gallaries selling large photos, some are like 4'x5' (feet, not inches). I have seen ones by Ansel Adams, David Muench, etc. etc. but not John Shaw, Galen Rowell .... That is the difference between small-format landscape and large-format landscape. (I actually saw a large print of an Emperor Penguin image by Lanting. He captured a great moment, but it is quite grainy in that kind of enlargement.)

 

For markets such as calendar, books, magazines, etc., small-format is often sufficient. 99% of the great images in Shaw's book is shot in small format; they just won't look good if enlarged to 4'x5'. However, Shaw does use a medium-format view camera occasionally.

[m._huber]

Hugh, you have asked a valid question and did not come across as being critical. My mother-in-law, who shot mostly family and desert scenes used only a Rollie for 20 years and had some great pictures which made great enlargements. When I used her camera, I seemed to get a higher percentage of good pictures. (I think it was partly the negative size, but mostly because I needed to shoot more carefully -- no more 36 frames.) I always regretted that I felt duty bound to turn over her jewel of a camera to her only remaining son who was not only an avid photographer, but associated that camera with her because she used it so often. .

[qtluong]

I think you are right. John Shaw is a stock photographer. As he explains himself in his

book on the business of nature photography, nature stock is a

numbers game. The more slides you have, the better. Quality has

just to meet a certain standard which is easily obtained using

any decent 35mm gear (no need for even "top-notch glass"). It would

be considerably more expensive and overkill to use MF/LF for nature

stock. The ease of set-up with 35mm let you shoot a larger variety

of images in a given time frame.

<p>

For fine art (ie prints market), where utmost quality is the main

criteria, you can still get away with 35mm if that was the only

way to get the image, like in wildlife photography. The case of

Galen Rowell is interesting. Besides his stock business (150000 images), he sells prints in this galleries. You often hear that he has to use

35mm because he is climbing mountains, and in his writings he likes

to emphasize how fast/long he ran/climbed/hiked to get such and such shot. In fact, Galen Rowell was mostly active in climbing and mountaineering before becoming a very succesfull photographer. If you're not actually climbing, it's not difficult to lug heavier photo gear into the mountains. Most of his recent work is "standard" landscape. In his last book ("Inner Game"), I sensed a defensiveness

towards larger format photographers that I didn't see for instance

in his classic "Mountain light".

Tuan. <a href = "http://www.terragalleria.com/parks">Images of National Parks</a>

[dan_smith]

35mm is the best format around for action. While some use medium format for wildlife the ability to follow focus & shoot a number of frames of a bird in flight, sparring elk and other fast action is not as good. In Large Format I can shoot wildlife, but am so limited compared to 35mm it isn't a contest. For starters, a 600 f/4 & moter driven 35mm gives a ton of options I can't hope to match witn a 4x5, much less with an 8x10. But put a contact print from an 8x10 neg next to an enlargement from 35mm & the 35mm loses.

Shaw is excellent, both as a photographer & a writer. For every shot I get using the 4x5, 8x10 or larger, a good 35mm photographer can get a few rolls of film, various lenses & angles and have a dozen different markets in line while providing each with original chromes.

It is simply a matter of using the gear that does the job. A 30x40 inch print from an 8x10 negative or chrome is quite different from the same size print from a 35mm frame.

The best of those who shoot 35mm & make big enlargements often get reproduction quality negatives made in 8x10 format & make the enlargements from these bigger negs. Not quite the same as an 8x10 original, but better in many ways than enlarging straight from the neg or chrome.

John Shaw survives using 35mm because he provides what the editors need: quality & variety on their light table when they need it. After all, the demands of magazine printing are not too high in most cases and don't really need a LF chrome to produce good results. But, put the same images on a light table in 35mm & larger formats & in most cases the 35mm gets passed over quickly as the editors grab the big chromes. Not "better", they show better because, all else being equal in composition, they are so much easier to see & more impressive when viewed.

[bob_k]

Is it too strong to say that *ALL* of the great nature photographers of recent years use 35mm?

 

I know Art Wolfe pretty much uses exclusively 35mm and in my opinion, he has become the greatest nature photographer ever.

[david_goldfarb]

For static landscapes or macro work, I think one can do better with medium or large format than with 35mm, especially if you have the option of lens movements (now possible in 35mm with the new variety of PC lenses).

 

Much nature photography is not so static, though, and long telephoto work is just not a practical option with anything larger than 35mm. To take advantage of 6x7cm and have the equivalent of a 600mm lens (a popular size for birds) for the 35mm format, you would need about a 1200mm lens, which isn't even made for any current 6x7cm camera as far as I know, and would probably require at least a stabilizer between the camera body and the tripod leg in addition to the lens being mounted to the tripod. Go to 4x5, and you'll need a 2000mm lens (there might be an old process lens designed to cover some huge format in this size), which means having 2000mm of bellows extension, two tripods to maneuver, and then you have to be able to focus on a potentially moving target, get the filmholder in, pull the darkslide, and fire the shutter with your two-meter cable release and hope it will still be in focus with the short DOF of the 2000mm lens.

[p_l_jensen]

"Is it too strong to say that *ALL* of the great nature photographers of recent years use 35mm? "

 

 

Yes it is. For landscape photography, which constitute more than 90% of all professional nature photography, medium format is by far the most popular format. In fact, a relatively minor percentage of professional nature photographers use 35mm format exclusively.

So far, I haven't seen any correlation of the quality of the image (in terms of content) with the format used.

[p_l_jensen]

I certainly agree that 35mm is currently the most convenient format for long telephoto work. However, there are several wildlife photographer who use medium format. Eg. Pentax makes both 600/4, 800/4, 800/6.7 and 1000/8 for their 67. These lenses also fit their 645 systems as well as 35mm cameras.

[paul_purcell]

Shaw states that for just about every shot he makes, the camera is on a tripod. He wonders how somebody can pay $1500 for a lens, hand hold it at only medium shutter speeds, then complain how their super lens really isn't all that sharp. As stated above, he knows how to wring the most from his equipment in a wide variety of situations.

[qtluong]

<i>Is it too strong to say that *ALL* of the great nature photographers of recent years use 35mm?</i><p>

 

If you look at the large-format monographs of landscape

photography published in the US, you'll notice that a large part

were shot with MF or LF. Interestingly, John Shaw has written lots

of books about photography and appears to be a succesful stock

photographer, but he has not published a monograph of his work yet.

David Muench, Jack Dykinga, William Neill, Christopher Burkett

are all great nature photographers by any standards. They just don't photograph wildlife and get away with antiquated cameras.

Tuan/<a href = "http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~qtluong/landscapes/lf/">

Large format landscape photographs</a>

[david_lake_clayton]

I couldn't resist this thread. First off, I would hesitate to dub

anyone the "greatest nature photographer ever." I've met Art

Wolfe, and he was a heck of a nice guy, and he sure does have

nice images, but such a title is problematic for me, because of

the variety of things covered by "nature photography."

<br><br>

But, getting back to the original question, I will tell you that it is

possible to make remarkable 30"x45" prints from 35mm

originals. I was at the NANPA show in Vegas in January with a

few of my images, one of which was a 30x40 of a leopard. I had

quite a few folks who were more than a little surprised when they

learned that the print came from a 35 original. Certainly, in

books/calendars/such, most of the advantages of medium and

LF are lost, and certainly, larger enlargements can be made

without grain showing (or showing as much). But you could

never capture most of the images I've made with a 645, much

less a Hassy or a 67. Image the MF equivalent of the 400mm or

600mm lenses for 35mm! Wildlife typically does not lend itself

to anything but 35mm (notable exceptions such as Mangelsen's

"Born of the North Wind" excluded). And of course there's the

mobility issue.

<br><br>

With few exceptions, most successful nature photographers do

not make their money in selling photographic prints; they make it

in editorial and stock sales (and leading tours and such - it is

very difficult to make a living as a nature photographer through

publishing and printing alone).

<br><br>

So anyway, with a good drum scanner, good techies and a

Lambda or LightJet, remarkable enlargements are possible

from 35mm. If I make it to the next NANPA show in Florida,

please come by the booth to see what I mean.

<br><br>

Cheers,

<br><br>

David Clayton<br>

Repro Images

[stemked]

I saw this thread too. I actually teach a Nature Photography course at Hanover College using Shaw's book. He is a great instructor; really has the nack for teaching and even the students like the book!

 

I saw a little note up here about the Pentax 67 being used for Nature Photography. I too, use Pentax 67 in addition to my 35mm system (also Pentax, excellent 200 macro, other lovely optics and I can back up my 67 with the 35mm using the 67 to K adaptor). The lenses noted in that list are HUGE! I don't know, my concept of nature photography is packing what I can hiking with the lot. When I have the 67 with me it's two lenses, extension tubes and a TC and some 35mm backup. The thought of using those lenses and the tripod(s) one would have to use is pretty frightening. But even more than that, even if you were shooting from a car and didn't have to transport your gear, how could one possibly effectively use a 67 lens above the 600mm size for action nature work? The new 67 II would make the metering possible, but just the shere bulk of trying to move that lens with a moving animal, keeping it steady, focusing, is there anyone who actually manages all of this with the 67? That would me one heck of a photographer (and I think I wouldn't want to meet him/her in a dark alley!)

[david_goldfarb]

Canon used to make a 1200mm lens in the FL mount and later in the FD mount for 35mm. Even that was just too impractical (two tripods recommended), and it was never popular. Most nature photogs would use the FD 800/5.6L or 600/4.5 with an extender if they needed that kind of magnification.

[stephen_ratzlaff]

Tripod, tripod, tripod!

 

You don't see many LF and MF photographers hand holding their gear do you? Especially for landscape.

[paul_owen]

Shoots as if he's using LF!!