What Would Edward Weston Use Today?

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

See Moonrise, Hernandez & then come back & explain just how the Zone System assures all this.

Read Adams' explanation on this picture and then come back and explain just how little you understood.

Since he was pressed for time and did not have a meter in hand Adams based his exposure on the moon's known reflection. He basically took an educated guess and he did not use the ZS for this picture. To his misfortune the guess was wrong.

OTOH why dont you pick some of the hundreds of pictures he took using the ZS and which are great and come back an explain to us how the ZS does not work......

[Richard Schlesinger]

Oh good grief!

[Brian C. Miller]

Jorge is right.

Yes, Adams knew the exposure for the moon, and made the exposure for it. He saw the scene as he was driving home with his friends, and jammed on the brakes. He didn't find the meter as he was slapping his 8x10 camera in place, but he knew what to set to get the proper detail in the full moon. By the time he had flipped the film holder over for a second shot, the light was gone from the crosses.

By and large though, he didn't have that much grief with the negative. He did complain that it was difficult to print, and finally he used some intensifier on the negative's foreground.

[Mark Davidson]

I believe that the prime motivation with Weston, Adams, Strand and the other saints of photography was to create exactly the image they envisioned with the equipment and materials available to them in the day.

Weston's heirs use the processes and equipment to strive to produce images that evoke the work, look and feel of Edwards work.

Edward and the others would not be tied to the past. After all they did not use Daugerrotypes did they? And the few who started with wet plates abandoned them promptly with the introduction of mass produced dry plates and later, sheet film.

I think EW would be online chatting with the enormous online community about the latest Epson printer and techniques for getting better highlight detail out of his Canon 1DsmkII.

And he would be working in color.

[Mark Sawyer]

Actually, Weston did work in color for a little while (8x10 Kodachrome), but wasn't terribly excited by it. The images seemed to me to be weaker versions of his b/w work. I doubt he'd do much color today, darkroom or digital. Just idle speculation...

[Michael A.Smith]

Paul: "Michael, perhaps you could explain how developing by inspection could have reduced the number of burning/dodging operations shown in Adams printing notes (on page 108)?"

Well, if he had developed the negative less he wouldn't have had to burn in so much. He could have seen howdevelopment was coming along if he had developed by inspection. There is certainly nothing wrong with dodging and burning. I do it myself on almost every print. But I believe one has more control, not less, over the negative when one observes it as it is developing. Photography is a visual medium--I like to keep everything visual and not mechanical.

[Paul Butzi]

Michael:

If he'd developed less, then it seems to me the overall contrast would have been wrong, and either he'd have had to adjust the overall contrast of the print to compensate (and thus end up with the same burning and dodging) or else he'd have to do even more burning and dodging to get the effective contrast back in the trees.

That is, except for the two brief dodges and the two edge burns, the entirety of the manipulation is burning down the sky. Adams did it in 5 separate burns, presumably to make it easier to manage.

In particular, the sky along the upper edge of the print in the center receives two stops more exposure than the foreground forest. To eliminate the need to burn down the sky, you'd need to reduce the density in that part of the negative by 0.6 logD. That's a huge change, (if we assume the clouds fell way up the tonal scale, on Zone 9 or so, it's equivalent to N-3 or N-4) and if you reduce development that much without adjusting exposure, you'll lose shadow detail and the contrast in the rest of the print will be very low.

You could reduce development and keep the density down in that area, sure. But when you do, you reduce the contrast in the foreground forest substantially, and unless you're printing on VC paper, there's no realistic way to get that contrast back unless you print on higher contrast paper/devleper. And when you do that, you're back in the same place in terms of burning down the sky.

In other words, the fundamental problem is that the sky was much brighter than the foreground, and the foreground contrast is very important to the image. I just don't see how adjusting development (either by planning reduced development via the ZS or through development by inspection) can compensate for this problem.

[Michael A.Smith]

Well, Adams clearly got exactly what he wanted. A little more exposure would have solved the foreground detail problem. I've had to do that much dodging and burning myself. DBI is no panacea, but in general, in my experience it is more consistent than developing film any other way. When the vagaries of shutters and light meters are taken into consideration (those things do change over time), the only way to compensate is to look at the negtive as it is developing. Doing it this way may not be for everyone, but I have always found it to be the most sure way.

[Gregory Gomez]

Brian Ellis,

If my original question was pointless, why did you even bother to respond in the first place?

My previous observation about the earlier sophomoric responses still stands, including your original post and your follow-up rebuttal, which, in itself, is less than pointless.

Have a good day sir.

[David Vickery]

To answer your question Gregory:

Like it or not; the final image is a product of the particular process and/or materials used.

So if you assume that he wanted to continue to produce the type of images that he is famous for, then he would have to use the products that most closely allow that.

And yes, today that would be wonderful Azo.

The film choice would be less critical in 8x10, but he would have to use the film that is closest to what he was using. My uneducated guess about that would be either Efke 100 or TriX. But then again, maybe he would like the reciprocity characteristics of TMY400 and go with that?