the f 64 club

**Dan Fromm** · 19-Jul-2009, 11:06

Steve, you have the lens, ask it what it can do for you.

If you contact print, you'll be fine to at least f/64. As I wrote, resolution needed in the negative depends on how much the negative is to be enlarged, i.e., on how big you want to print, and on the distance at which the print will be viewed. There's no hard and fast rule that fits all situations.

FWIW, I have a Wray process lens, viz., a 14"/10 Process Lustrar Series II that stops to f/90. I got it to use, if I used it at all, on 2x3, so tested it hung way out in front of a Nikon. Remember, for me all that matters with a lens that long is image quality at the center. It was best at f/22, not really usable at larger apertures. I don't use it. When the situation wants a 360, I use a 360/10 Apo Saphir.

**Drew Wiley** · 19-Jul-2009, 14:35

The f/64 title was their way of officialy differentiating their credo from the "fuzzies".
"pictorialists", and Photo-sessesionists which had dominated "art" photography up to
that time. It is also interesting how people like AA tended to photograph flat plane subjects for awhile, so that everything would be in precise focus. Contact printers
could take greater liberties. But those of us who shoot 8x10 or larger often use f/64
or analogous tiny apertures, because the degree of magnification is less important
in many instances than depth of field. In a few minutes I'm going to go print some
8x10's from 35mm negatives - that's about a 7X enlargement. With 8x10 film a 7x
enlargement would be six feet across! The tiny bit of performance you lose to
diffraction isn't a big deal when you have a big piece of film; and the fact that film
doesn't lie perfectly flat in a conventional holder is one more factor favoring smaller
apertures, along with greater lens coverage angles.

**Don7x17** · 19-Jul-2009, 15:38

Pictorialism was the rage at the time Group f.64 was formed. The lenses used by the pictorialists delivered the softer effects while wide open -- often f3, f3.8, f5. By the time these lenses were stopped down to f64 (or even a few stops), the diffuse effects were no longer present in the negative. Group f.64 was started by Willard Van Dyke. If you'd like more on Group f.64, acquire a copy of "Seeing Straight. The f.64 Revolution in Photography" which was published by The Oakland Museum to accompany an exhibition (1993 -- the exhibit traveled across the country. It was excellent)

If you want to see the effects of the Pictorialist lens art, you can see current use of the lenses -- do a search in this forum for Jim Galli. Look at his work as well as other posters. Look especially for instances of use of certain Pinkhan and Smith Lenses - highly valued back in 1920-1940 by Pictorialists, and valued still today. there are many other lenses that produce similar effects....again the soft diffuse look is mostly wide open and you lose it by stopping down.

Steichen and Weston were 8x10 users. Contact printers -- so effects of diffration did not affect their images.

Early Weston and even Ansel prints were in the Pictorialist style -- Weston made images of people, usually heads; Ansel had a large body of landscape Pictorial work. You can see Ansel's early fuzzy focus work in "Ansel Adams, the Early Years". Again this published as part of of an exhibit, this time by The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1991

And more of Adam's early work is reproduced in "Pictorialism in California, Photographs 1900-1940" (Getty and Huntington Library collaborated on this exhibit).

And today most 4x5 users that enlarge try not to go beyond f16/f22 and 8x10 users try to stay around f32, to avoid the effects of diffraction. Enlarging 8x10 to get a 16x20 is just 2x, whereas 35mm is an extreme enlargement to get to 16x20. Meanwhile those of us using larger formats don't worry about using f64 or f128 or even f256...we're all contact printing.

A good thread, even though dredged up from the past....

**Drew Wiley** · 19-Jul-2009, 19:09

One of the people who eventually rebelled from their f/64 mentors was the late
Pirkle Jones. He was making his own platinum prints almost to the end, and they
were definitely "retro" (warm, soft, fuzzy). Quite an amazing career. And I think I
like EW's early work even more than his more doctrinaire later prints, though they
are rarely exhibited due to their very high value.