How important is great technology to a great photograph?

Of course, there are exceptions when a camera is simply incapable of delivering an acceptable image due to poor performance.

filmrescue said:

Interesting but it seems rather rigid. Sometimes you'll come across a picture that is completely failing technically but it's still an outstanding photograph. This perhaps due to irony or extreme emotional depth. This photo by Vincent Teuliere is a fine example.

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You mis-understand.

The 3/10 is the maximum possible score. Not a constant.

filmrescue said:

What would you rate it?

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S: 1.5
W: 1.5
V: 2.5
E: 2
Aggregate: 7.5



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Ananda
http://anandasim.mp

Absolutely...I think my question was posed simply to be a bit provocative and have people talk a little bit about pictures and not so much about the tools.

How exactly did you work that one out? I think you're forgetting that Ansel Adams was a pioneer.

The great 18th century astronomer William Hershel said "once discovered by a superior power, an inferior power will suffice".

He was referring to the magnification required to observe double-stars, but the quote has broader applications... such as comparing us DPReview imitators to Ansel Adams. He discovered, he innovated. I wish I could successfully imitate his art, let alone invent my own.
--
Dan

filmrescue said:

Interesting but it seems rather rigid. Sometimes you'll come across a picture that is completely failing technically but it's still an outstanding photograph. This perhaps due to irony or extreme emotional depth. This photo by Vincent Teuliere is a fine example.

What would you rate it?

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He has some great pics...but this one I'd rate "delete."

.

It makes a refreshing change from noise this, high iso that etc.

filmrescue said:

Great pictures are about subject matter and capturing that subject matter creatively, with passion and thought. While the technology can't be completely discounted it is ultimately just gravy.

Any takers on that idea?

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It has always been the case that the great master artists were also great masters of their tools. Like the stories of Ansel Adams arguing for 18% gray cards with Kodak. It’s also the case, quite obviously, that you can’t take a wide-angle shot with a long lens. So while it must be true that artistry makes the image, it must also be true that deep technical knowledge...the understanding of strengths and limits of equipment...is guiding that manifestation of that artistry.

Technology is an enabler, and it’s the artist’s understanding of new technology that allows his art to be extended in directions previously unobtainable.

.

filmrescue said:

This topic came up way down in a thread and I figured it was worthy of it's own thread.

Someone commented that Ansel Adams required great gear to take great pictures. I argued that Ansel Adams likely would have taken some pretty great pictures regardless of what camera he had to work with. So much of what made his images great is composition and having the patience to wait for great light and to recognize great light when it occurred. Huge format film and great lenses didn't hurt but there's so much more to what made his pictures good then just that. Give him a point and shoot with a wide angle adapter strapped on with duct tape, he likely would have found a way to make it work for him. I didn't really get any support for this but I'm sticking to my guns.

Here's my view....

Great pictures are about subject matter and capturing that subject matter creatively, with passion and thought. While the technology can't be completely discounted it is ultimately just gravy.

Any takers on that idea?

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Your post made me think of Impressionist painter Henri Matisse. After a bout of cancer, Matisse no longer had the strength to stand and paint. Still, his creativity drove me to make art, and he embarked on what he called his second life, making huge, brilliant collages called gouaches découpés.

Matisse was like the master photographer handed a Kodak Brownie. He found a way to use scizzors and glue---much more primitive than mixing colors and applying textures of paint. The lack of "equipment" never slowed him down, and some people like his collages even more than the paintings he did.

I think where you find yourself on the "how important is great gear" continuum has to do with what you think is great photography. If you believe that it is rendering a scene as exactly like what you saw as possible, then the "record making" gear is more important. But if you lean toward interpretation and conveying moods and impressions, the gear is more a means to an end. You can get by on whatever is at hand. Then the L-glass is far from essential.

--
http://www.pbase.com/soenda

Stan_P said:

Ansel Adams was great photographer, he became famous after starting using sophisticated camera.

But why always mentioning Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams? Because this name is most recognized now. It is most effective to use well recognized name to support the idea. It has heavy artillery effect.

Ask yourself, can you make great photo with basic camera?

--
http://www.stan-pustylnik.smugmug.com

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Ansel Adams is recognized universally as a great photographer and while I am not a big fan of his images I can certainly understand his appeal. Having said that he was however a giant in the field of developing and pushing the limits of technique. He was responsible for the popularity of the zone system for exposure and processing formulations and is usually credited with inventing the system. He was a master teacher and craftsman who from the best I can tell used rather prosaic equipment. But don't forget for landscape photography a simple view or field camera is more than enough for the job.

For those who are unfamiliar with the zone system you can google it but briefly it is a system used to combine film characteristics with exposure and development that would aid you to pre visualize how the final print will look before making the exposure. But he was also a master in the dark room. There is a vidio out there somewhere of how half dome is printed. The process is more akin to a dance than anything else I can think of, A great man great teacher and Giant in photography
--
bosjohn aka John Shick [email protected]

Dave Luttmann said:

LeRentier wrote:
and use things like HDR and tone mapping.
Gawd I hope not!!!

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Why not? Adams was a ruthless tone manipulator. His prints look nothing like his negatives because of the extent to which he manipulated them. The entire point of the Zone System was to optimize the mapping of the dynamic range of the scene to the downstream photographic media. That's another way of saying intelligent dynamic range compression, which is what HDR tone mapping ultimately is.

Just because some people abuse HDR for garish looks doesn't mean HDR is wrong in principle.

bosjohn said:

...he was however a giant in the field of developing and pushing the limits of technique. He was responsible for the popularity of the zone system for exposure and processing formulations and is usually credited with inventing the system.

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In other words, he loved exploiting the available technology as far as he could take it. If Ansel Adams was here today, he would be hooking up digital raw backs, bracketing for HDRs, and writing articles about the finer points of digital capture, raw conversion, profiling every device in your chain, and how to get every last gray tone into your prints using QuadTone RIP, custom monochrome inksets, and curves for each channel.

Yes...this is a great example and perhaps leads me to an answer of sorts.

Great gear is essential to technically great photographs while with photography as art, the gear is not all that essential. A good artist will work around the limitations of their tools.

Maybe the better question would have been is photography art but I think the answer to that can be found here as well.

You should reread my statement

In his time Adams was a brilliant photographer and he was/is justly recognised for that talent.

But, todays standards put a digital camera in everyones hands. Today everyone can have their own digital darkroom. Today anyone can print their own photos.

Nobody today is mystified with the workings of photography. Its not a miracle anymore.

Copying some of the old masters style does not make you brilliant but as you can see there are many, many great photographers on this forum and anybody that argues against that is a fool.
Gerry

G. Gray said:

He would not be recognised as a great photographer . Many DPR amateurs are actually better than him by todays standards.
Gerry

filmrescue said:

This topic came up way down in a thread and I figured it was worthy of it's own thread.

Someone commented that Ansel Adams required great gear to take great pictures. I argued that Ansel Adams likely would have taken some pretty great pictures regardless of what camera he had to work with. So much of what made his images great is composition and having the patience to wait for great light and to recognize great light when it occurred. Huge format film and great lenses didn't hurt but there's so much more to what made his pictures good then just that. Give him a point and shoot with a wide angle adapter strapped on with duct tape, he likely would have found a way to make it work for him. I didn't really get any support for this but I'm sticking to my guns.

Here's my view....

Great pictures are about subject matter and capturing that subject matter creatively, with passion and thought. While the technology can't be completely discounted it is ultimately just gravy.

Any takers on that idea?

Click to expand...

--

If you go into Home Depot and someone offers to help you and he is not an employee, you are in Canada

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--

If you go into Home Depot and someone offers to help you and he is not an employee, you are in Canada

Ha...when I was first going to respond to your post I was going to link to some fabulous Adams picture. As I looked through the tiny thumbnail doing a google image search I realized that to some degree you were right...As thumbnails, without the brilliant clarity, they only go so far. Adams was a poor example for my point. The picture I linked to on this thread with the subject "3/30" is a much better example of what i'm talking about.

were alive today and posting his work on DPR how many would be ripping his photos apart by saying not enough detail, to much contrast, over sharpened, noise, etc. You would also have, you should have used a Canon, Nikon, Olympus or this or that lens. If someone posted a link to his website you would have many saying, what's so great about those photos, I can get the same results in Photoshop.
--
Tom

so very true.

I find these types of discussions a little disappointing. We seem to confuse what an artist had to work with over 50 years ago with what can now be acheived using the simplest of "point & shoot" cameras. When Ansel Adams took photographs, his cameras had only the minimum of things to offer as controls......A lense, shutter and aperture, and film. What was eventually captured on that film was determined by the camera user. How it was finally printed made the difference as to whether it was a "masterpiece" or no more than a "snapshot". Ansel Adams' masterful skill and "eye" are what separated him from all the rest.

Most have the mistaken belief, because their new digital cameras can automatically render images that are properly exposed, color corrected and relatively sharp in focus, that they are good photographers................maybe even as good as Ansel Adams. Nothing could be as far from the truth then that. I challange anyone to get hold of a simple film camera..........with nothing more than film and the simple controls of aperture control and shutter speed and create an image similar to what you can get from our digital cameras. Lets see how long it takes for you to get something you might consider adequate. During your travel.......only then will you know and appreciate the genius and masterful talent of Ansel Adams. He had to invision, while setting the aperture and shutter controls at the moment of capture, what the image would look like when it was finally printed several days later. We now just simply look at the LCD on our digital camera and quickly decide if its a keeper or worthy of a discard. No real effort other than pointing our P&S and pressing the shutter button.

Let's not confuse what current digital technology is capable of doing.....even for the most inexperienced in our lot, or what Ansel Adams might be doing with it today. Only consider what he did with what he worked with then..........and you will be enlightened. SCR

Dave Luttmann said:

Gawd I hope not!!!

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Ansel Adam used a lot of HDR tonemapping in his work, at the time it was manually done and known as "dodging" and "burning". It was from a single exposure, so more similar to "tonemapping from a RAW file", but the dynamic range of BW film makes "HDR tonemapping" a suitable name for his PP technique.

--
My Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36164047@N06/

filmrescue said:

Great gear is essential to technically great photographs

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I'd say "the right gear is helpful to successfully shooting specific subjects"

filmrescue said:

while with photography as art, the gear is not all that essential. A good artist will work around the limitations of their tools.

Click to expand...

I'd clarify that. In the Matisse example above, the artist was able to do different work by letting go of his preferred materials, but it's still important to note that each set of materials led to different results and in each case, the materials were selected by the artist. So unless you're an artists content to find something creative to do with whatever is handed to you, you're still going to select your gear carefully to achieve your intended result.

An artist (sculptor, painter, photographer) named Norman Rich frequented the Sony forum, then the Canon DSLR forums - you can find his work on pbase here: http://www.pbase.com/norman

He wrote extensively on the Sony forum about art-related subjects, about appreciating art for what it is, and not trying to judge it as "good" or "bad" ...and he wrote about how successful art is "realization of intent". The artist starts out intending to do something. The right equipment is going to be helpful if not essential in realizing that intent.

• Dennis

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Gallery at http://kingofthebeasts.smugmug.com

I actually agree with your first premise as the OP.
People who break ground in any enterprise are recognised years later as great.

Technology has put these same tools to the masses. Nowdays a housewife who is not a pro photographer can churn out brilliant photos.

WHY, because technology gave her the tools and she has some inherent ability to use them.

Ansel Adams produced art in the guise of photographs. He was good at it. If he had the tools of today he would be better at it. BUT, he would now have many competitors to the fame which we have awarded him in his time.

I have looked at many photos of Adams. Quite often they are simplistic photos that nowdays people call art. A black and white rendition of 3 trees on a hillside in silhouette is art and the kind of thing you hang over your chesterfield because it is simple in its expression and people like that.
There is an expression in the photo industry.
"Even a blind pig will find an acorn"
It means , if you take 100,000 shots you are bound to get some good ones.
That is what technology has done.

My post was not to diminish Ansel Adams image only to point out that things have changed.
Gerry

filmrescue said:

Ha...when I was first going to respond to your post I was going to link to some fabulous Adams picture. As I looked through the tiny thumbnail doing a google image search I realized that to some degree you were right...As thumbnails, without the brilliant clarity, they only go so far. Adams was a poor example for my point. The picture I linked to on this thread with the subject "3/30" is a much better example of what i'm talking about.

Click to expand...

--

If you go into Home Depot and someone offers to help you and he is not an employee, you are in Canada