Ansel Adams and Depth of Field

[garry edwards]

Well, I feel that some useful posts have come out of a thread that looked a bit like a troll to me...

 

What's particuarly useful is that it's been pointed out that Ansel Adams tended to shoot from very long distances,

maximising DOF. Joseph Wisniewski, as well as thinking that my name's Gerry, also thinks that tilt/shift lenses can

replace camera movements. Maybe he's right, I have no personal experience of them because when I very

occasionally need to make use of movements I just use a camera that has them.

 

Photography is a mixture of skill, knowlege and creativity. I don't really agree that *There's a lot of trial-and-error in

practical photography*. Knowlege replaces most of the need for trial and error.

[steve_swinehart]

So many misconceptions...

 

1. Ansel Adams did not start Group f/64. Willard Van Dyke and Imogen Cunningham proposed the group and asked Ansel to participate along with a number of other photographers.

 

2. There is more to depth-of-field than the f/stop. Any camera (digital or film) with bellows, and tilts for the lens plane and film plane can have more depth-of-field through Scheimpflug corrections.

 

3. If you understand the hyper focal distances on a lens you can make the entire image in focus.

 

"The impression I received was that depth of field and sharpness of image could not and should not be achieved with a DLSR."

 

Incredibly bad assumption. The attached image has everything in focus from 6-inches to infinity.<div></div>

[steve m smith]

<I>Ok, it looks like the days of the Ansel Adams breathtaking scenes are over. </I><BR><BR>No because large format cameras are still available and still work.

[mike dixon]

<i>Any camera (digital or film) with bellows, and tilts for the lens plane and film plane can have more depth-of-field through Scheimpflug corrections.</i><P>

Lens tilts don't increase the amount of DOF; they change the angle of the plane of focus.

[Peter_in_PA]

Jerry,

 

Here's the bottom line. If you want to emulate someone like Ansel Adams, one of the first things it will require is a much greater

knowledge of photography, in practice AND theory, than I am pretty sure you currently have. Read "The Camera" or, even better, "The

Negative" by Adams and you learn that he was TREMENDOUSLY knowledgeable (and even though we're digital now, the principles still

apply). He was both a master artist and a master scientist. He uses a format that is many times bigger than the format you and I use

with a DSLR as well.

 

Lots of experimentation and a good amount of reading will serve you well. Gleaning only the tips you can pick up from mostly

anonymous strangers on photo.net will not be nearly as useful, as you are already finding out.

 

Earlier, you wrote "It appears the majority of posters in this forum resort to asserting the ignorance of somebody that disagrees with

them or may not appreciate their advice and counsel." If you start out, Jerry, from a position of admitted ignorance, you will learn more

than if you think a small amount of knowledge is enough to challenge people who really know what they're talking about. You have

come across, to me anyway, as a bit condescending in this post towards people who really know quite a lot more than you.

 

Humility is very useful when learning, and the lack of it keeps the mind from absorbing anything new. I learn new things from smarter

people than me every day. Admitting my ignorance is often the first step in that process.

[charles_stobbs3]

Digital photography is still in diapers. As it dvelops more and more things will be available. Certainly an 8 x 10 sensor would make greater depth of field possible.

[Ed_Ingold]

Jerry,

 

The "Chessmen" photo would be a fairly simple task using a swing* movement with the lens. By changing the plane of sharpest focus, you could easily render any particular row of chessmen in sharp focus. Typically you would pick the first row for this treatment. Rows behind that plane would not necessarily be in sharp focus, but better focus if you stop down. The region defining DOF gets tilted in the same manner as the plane of focus. Your choice of the point of view and relative position of the chessmen (especially in the foreground) would enhance or detract from the illusion of great DOF.

 

You will find a very clear and concise exposition of the Scheimflug principle (and other view camera movements) in "The Camera" by Ansel Adams. Adams did not invent the Scheimflug principle (clue - it's named for someone else), nor the Zone System. However he did make good use of both and could write with precision and clarity for others to follow.

 

* Swing is the same as "tilt" rotated 90 degrees. A tilt-shift lens on a small format camera might suffice for the "Chessmen" challeng, since the tilt axis can be rotated at will. A view camera adds similar movements in the rear standard, but with different results. For details, read the book (or books). By the way, you can buy a view camera and a couple of lenses for the same price as a new Nikon tilt-shift lens. Sinar cameras have focus aids and assymetric movements which make the process nearly painless.

 

To reiterate a previous post, large format cameras, including 8x10 inch, do NOT have a greater depth of field than smaller formats if you compare lenses with the same field of view. Were it not for back and lens movements, large format cameras would be at a severe disadvantage. There are books on the subject (including "The Camera") which explain this effect. Alternately, step away from the computer for a day or two, buy or rent a view camera, and see for yourself.

[golden]

this shot was taken at f11 using a 53mm super angulon on a view camera, front and rear tilt<div></div>

[golden]

btw, I like picture of the chessmen, looks cool like that

[matthew_newton]

I think everyone is missing another key point, a larger format needs a higher f/stop to acheive the same depth of field. That APS-C sensor is diffraction limited at about f/11, meaning anything smaller and you start losing image quality because of diffraction, but that same APS-c sensor covering the same field of view as a 35mm sensor and the same f-stop has a greater depth of field, that 35mm sensor is probably going to need to be stopped down an extra stop to be about the same, f/16 which is about its maximum diffraction limited f/stop.

 

Compare a 35mm picture to a digicams picture, even fairly close up at a wide aperature (well, for a digicam) that digicam is going to have a huge amount of depth of field, try it with a 35mm camera at say f/4 and the same field of view and the dof is rather narrow. Ansel Adams using f/64 was probably acheiving about the same depth of field as someone using a 35mm camera and f/16 would be.

 

I have taken landscape shots with a 24mm lens and my 35mm film camera using f/16 where basically everything from my feet to infinite was sharp. I had maximum dof, with wildlife photography using f/16 is prohibitive and I also don't want maximum dof, I want just enough dof, so I open things up as much as I can. Its all about what you want to acheive. Landscape I generally want maximum dof, portriture and wildlife photography I generally don't want maximum dof.

[photobiscuits]

Sigh. I was under the impression that you were at least attempting this with a DSLR, since, you know, you said

"I’ve tried experimenting with achieving depth of field and a sharply focused image with my DLSR"(sic).<br>

Jerry, did you photograph this chessman image? Is this one of your attempts to get maximum dof and sharpness?

Exif data tells me this was done with a Coolpix S10 at aperture F3.5? Is this the "DSLR" you've been secretly

using to break the mold?<br>

[photo_dark]

An ultra-wide angle lens @ F16 on a full frame camera should give you all the depth of field you need. There is also the technique of focus bracketing, if for some reason F16 isn't enough.

 

To maximize your mileage (literally), learn how to use the hyperfocal distance. a 17mm lens @ F16, focused at 2' should give you depth of field from 1' away to infinity (in theory anyways). Give it a shot.

[joseph_wisniewski]

Albert - "The way you get more of your chessmen sharp is to use a longer lens and get further away from them."

 

Actually, it isn't. This is common bit of photographic "knowledge" that is totally wrong...

 

Macro photographers know the truth of the matter, that DOF depends only on aperture and magnification. To keep the composition the same, you have to keep the magnification the same. Focal length is irrelevant.

 

Say the chess board is 18 (450mm) long, and Jerry's composition is about 10 inches (250mm) wide. And lets say he's using 35mm full frame, to make things easy. Let's start with a 50mm lens. Since the frame is 36mm wide, and the group is 250mm, the center of the group of chessmen is (by similar triangles) is 347mm away (50mm/36mm*250mm). We shoot at f16.

 

"DOF master" (http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html) tells us that the DOF is 40mm, from 328mm to 368mm (everything rounded to the nearest mm).

 

Now, let's jump to a 105mm. We're now at 729mm from the center of the group. Holding the aperture constant at f16 (we want the same diffraction in all these tests) DOF is still 40mm, from 710 to 749mm.

 

How about a 200mm, at 1389mm. DOF is still 40mm, from 1369 to 1409mm.

 

Weird, isn't it?

[joseph_wisniewski]

"Joseph Wisniewski, as well as thinking that my name's Gerry,"

 

Hi Garry. Sorry about that.

 

"also thinks that tilt/shift lenses can replace camera movements. Maybe he's right, I have no personal experience of them because when I very occasionally need to make use of movements I just use a camera that has them."

 

That's the essence of the Scheimpflug principle, you need three planes to intersect, the subject plane, the film (or sensor) plane, and a plane perpendicular to the lens. Whether you tilt the camera with respect to the lens, or tilt the lens with respect to the camera is irrelevant. The big difference is in ease of focus and composition. When you tilt the rear standard of a view camera, the image tilts without shifting very far, so you can tweak the foreground focus vs. the background focus without messing up your composition much. When you tilt the front standard, the image moves on the focal plane, in addition to changing the foreground/background focus. This is a bit of a pain because every time you tilt to affect focus, you have to either tilt the camera in the opposite direction or shift the front standard, to preserve composition. So, rear tilt is easier, but obviously not practical in a DSR with a short focal length lens.

 

"Photography is a mixture of skill, knowlege and creativity. I don't really agree that *There's a lot of trial-and-error in practical photography*. Knowlege replaces most of the need for trial and error."

 

But how do we get knowledge, without at least a bit of trial and error?

 

Up above, Albert had "knowledge" of the relationship of focal length and depth of field. That same "knowledge" was probably shared by just about every participant in this thread. But it was totally wrong. I was exposed to differing "knowledge" (in Lester Lefkowitz's "The Manual of Close Up Photography". (or was it "of Macro Photography"?)) but still found it necessary to determine which of those purported bits of knowledge was correct via an experiment. I presented a similar experiment here to propagate the knowledge.

 

Trial and error is necessary, for learning. Rote memorization only goes so far.

 

Here's another good example, again from the field of macrophotography. Two of the most popular books on macrophotograpy are John Shaw's "Closeups in Nature" and Lefkowitz's "Manual". Both of those books cover the concept of "coupling" or "stacking" lenses for macro. They both teach us that when coupling lenses, the short lens (that's closest to the subject) acts like a "supplemental" lens, and both refer to the longer lens (closer to the camera) as the "main" or "prime" lens. The recommendation is that the "supplemental" lens should be ledt wide open, and treated as a high quality "close up" lens. The information contained in two respected books constitutes "knowledge". The problem is that both are in error. Brian Caldwell's knowledge and my own knowledge of optics conflicted with the knowledge in the texts. An "experiment" was necessary to determine which knowledge was, in fact, correct. Turned out to be Brian and me, hence my oft repeated postings about controlling aperture via the front lens and using the rear aperture only for flare control.

 

There's an old saying that goes something like: knowledge is learning from our mistakes, wisdom is learning from the mistakes of others.

 

Somewhere, mistakes have to happen. Trial and error has to happen.

 

OK, enough philosophizing...

[vcallaway]

Interesting discussion. I'm not a digital guy so this is some new info for me.

 

The chess board shot is a classic dilemma. While a longer lens flattens the focus plane it also changes the perspective. Not really an option in my opinion.

 

I would not mind seeing the dinosaur picture full size. The small picture posted here looks like the background is out of focus. It would certainly confirm or dispel the claims that a digital cannot work at that small of an aperture.

 

The software angle is interesting. I suppose with HDR and panoramic programs there would be one that merges focus planes. That actually interests me. Most lenses I own are sharpest between f5.6 and f11. I would be curious to see how something like that chess board would look processed that way.

[arie_vandervelden1]

Depth-of-field is the range of distances in which things are considered to be sharp. "Sharp" is subjective and depends on the size of your print. So, if we want to compare our DSLR snaps to a print by A.A. we should view prints at the same size.

 

The reason why you shouldn't stop down a DSLR lens to f/64 is diffraction. Smaller fstop, more diffraction. Suppose you look at your print on the wall, the one beside A.A. printed at the same size. One square cm of printed material came from a much smaller area on the DSLR sensor compared to A.A. LF negative. When printing photos taken with a DSLR we tend to magnify diffraction effects to a much greater extent than making prints from LF negatives.

 

So why did A.A. stop all the way down to f/64? Whould he have gotten a sharper photo at f/8? Well, maybe f/8 would have been sharper, but he needed f/64 for depth-of-field. With LF, you need longer focal lengths than DSLR for an equivalent field-of-view, and longer focal lengths need large fstops to have large depth-of-field.

 

For example, I have an APSC (crop-sensor) camera with a Sigma 10-20 mm lens. My 10 mm lens stopped down to f/11 yields roughly the same depth-of-field and roughly the same field-of-view as a 16 mm lens stopped down to f/16 on a FF 35 mm camera. Field-of-view and depth-of-field is what we see on our prints; the rest (fstop, focal length, sensor size) is just technical stuff, physics.

 

Lots of people are confused by this. There are many people who swear that APSC is inadequate for landscape photography because A) your field-of-view is cropped and B) you can't stop down as much. In reality, you need to buy the correct focal length and you need to stop down according to your camera's sensor size.

 

The moral of the story. LF does not solve depth-of-field issues because you can stop down further. Yes you can stop down further but the effect of this is negated by the need to use longer focal lengths. f/32 clubs are pointless because f/32 is just a camera setting, the effect of which depends on things like negative (sensor) size. IMO, more relevant would be a "100 degree field-of-view, everything tack sharp from very close foregound to infinity when viewed on a 13"x19" print" club.

[jerry_schuler]

Here's a quick shot for the f32 club with my 55mm AIS Micro Lens. The frist chess set picture I took at a store. So, I'll just use my plastic chessmen.<div></div>

[jerry_schuler]

Opps, that one was for the F2 Club. Here's the F32.<div></div>

[garry edwards]

Joseph asks: *But how do we get knowledge, without at least a bit of trial and error?*

 

We don't, at least not always. Sometimes we can only gain knowledge by practice but theoretical knowlege (an

understanding of the physics or process) often makes practice unnecessary because the theoretical knowledge tells

us what can and what can't work.

 

As an example, in a very different field, I was shooting clays yesterday. My hobby.I'm not a bad shot but, when I

started I couldn't hit a thing and so studied every article and every technical table I could find.

Yesterday, one of the stands consisted of a mini clay (much smaller than the standard ones) thrown up and away in

a straight line. An easy shot, except that tree cover meant that it had travelled 70 yards before it came into view, and

it was exactly edge on at that point. 70 yards is extreme range for a 12 bore shotgun and the target was tiny.

Some excellent shots were firing but the clays just weren't breaking. They were assuming they were missing but my

theoretical knowlege told me that the clays were unbreakable using normal skeet chokes, simply because, at that

distance, the shot pattern was far too wide to get the necessary minimum of 3 pellets to hit the edge of the tiny

target. So, when it was my turn to shoot I changed to full choke, got 4 hits and 3 breaks out of 5.

 

I didn't need to use trial and error to know that firing at unbreakable targets was a waste of lead.

[Peter_in_PA]

Jerry,

 

It might look fine on-screen like that. But I wonder what your f32 shot will look like printed at 8x10. Can you make a quick

100% of an infocus part of both images and post?

 

I will say, though, that I also have a 55mm micro, the f3.5 version, and I can stop down WAY further without having big

diffraction problems with it than most other lenses.

[christopher hartt dallas]

Good point about trial and error. Ansel Adams early years as a photographer were "self taught". He was also ADD so you can bet he wasn't pouring over books to gain the knowledge. It wasn't until much later - after he had done much of his best work, that he became the technical expert, authored photo learning books, etc.

[jerry_schuler]

Hmm.. I wonder... How many of the public viewers of images would zoom in 500% or 1000% or more to examine pixels?

[Peter_in_PA]

jerry, I'm just talking about 100%. I'm talking about what makes a difference in pictures. You keep referencing Ansel

Adams. I've seen plenty of his prints close-up. The detail is ASTOUNDING!

 

If you're just making images to display at 72dpi on a computer screen, F32 will be just fine.

[Peter_in_PA]

Here, I'll show you what I'm talking about Jerry.

 

This is an image I shot with my 55mm micro today on my desk, resized for the web, at f32. Looks fine to me.<div></div>

[jerry_schuler]

"Humility is very useful when learning, and the lack of it keeps the mind from absorbing anything new. I learn new things from smarter people than me every day. Admitting my ignorance is often the first step in that process."

 

One needs to temper that when a flock of know-it-alls swarm in.