Analysis of Ansel Adams’ Photography
So, there you are at a wedding. The groom is in his sharp black tuxedo and the bride is in her beautiful white dress and they are ready to cut the largest, most elegant white cake you have ever seen. For this occasion you want to get the greatest picture and everything has to be perfect. Your try a few different angles and pick out the one that is the great and then take a few pictures. The next day, you run to the local photo store to get your prints made. The person at the counter says black and white film takes at least a week, and you are quite displeased. But you think it will take a week, so actually the pictures should come out better. So, you go back in a week and you get your pictures and you are very disappointed, the tuxedo is too dark, the cake and dress are too gray. You are thinking to yourself, what did I do wrong? The answer is quite simple; you didn’t use the Zone System. The Zone System is a powerful, creative, and easy-to-use tool for producing black and white prints. Yes, outstanding looking prints can be made just by pointing the camera at a subject and taking a picture, but the Zone System was invented to give you the security that each negative will come out exactly as envisioned.
The camera; it is the most important part of photography. Understanding how the camera works, the Zone System becomes much easier more making great negatives and prints. Point and shoot cameras are very basic. You push down the shutter button just enough for the camera to focus itself and adjust itself for the picture. Pushing down the button all the way will cause your camera to take the picture. But, what is a shutter, how does it know what to do? It’s fairly easy to understand.
The Essay on Importance Of The Motion Picture Camera
The late 1800 s and early 1900 s saw great changes in the world of the arts. New forms of art and entertainment such as music, sports, art, literature, and cinema marked this period. Due to less work hours, people then had more free time. A popular new leisure activity, in the early 1900 s, was an evening out to the movies. During the late 1800 s, dozens of inventors worked on moving-picture ...
There are two main parts of the camera, the f/stop and the shutter speed. These two parts are what are adjusted for the correct amount of light exposure to the negatives. The f/stop is in the camera lens. The measurements range on the type of camera you own. The higher the number, the smaller the opening is in your lens, allowing less light to go through your camera, but putting more of the scene in focus. The smaller numbers allow more light to go through, but there is not going to be much in focus. The shutter is in the back of your camera. It looks like blinds for a window. When you push down the button to take a picture, the shutter opens for fractions of a second to expose the negatives. Anything slower than 1/60th of a second will require a tripod. The camera will pick up any movement, which would ultimately blur your negatives. With a manual camera, all you have to do is adjust those two items, look through your viewfinder to see if the negatives will be exposed to the correct amount of light.
Expose for the shadows is a key phrase used when referring to the Zone System. Negatives are dependent on light, without there isn’t an image ready for print. Chris Johnson, Professor of Photography at California College of Arts and Crafts, and the author of The Practical Zone System, explains that too much light, or overexposure, will result in negatives that are very dense and result in a print that is overly gray (9).
A loss in resolution and increase in the grain will also occur as well. Ansel Adams, inventor of the Zone System and author of such books as The Camera, The Print, and The Negative as adds that “The loss of high value detail with overexposure corresponds to the loss of shadow detail with underexposure…” (36-37).
The Essay on The Camera
It was a hot summer July afternoon in Key West, Florida with my family. We were on our first family vacation in a long while. All of us were standing in the ocean water watching the trainer directing the dolphin to do tricks. She each let us interact individually with the dolphin. It was one of the best feelings ever to just be so close to this gentle creature. It was one of the most memorable ...
An underexposed negative, or a negative that received too little light, will print dark with a little density or texture. Shadow areas in an underexposed negative will lose all detail.
Developed for the highlights is another key term when referring to the Zone System. Highlights in prints are directly related to the development of the negatives. Johnson explains that a negative that is underdeveloped is too thin and consequently, your print will be dark. An overdeveloped negative will produce a print that is too light or even white (9-10).
Adams states that an overdeveloped negative will expand the contrast of the negative (92).
You are taking some pictures, but the scene doesn’t have enough contrast. Overdevelop the negatives to add some more contrast. It’s the opposite with a scene that has too much contrast. You have to under develop for less contrast.
Adams was a genius when it came to black and white photography. In his years of studying, he created the Zone System using all the different values of gray, and here is what he came up with. The exposure scale or scale of zones is numbered from 0 to X, with Zone 0 being completely black and Zone X being paper based white. Each interval or Zone is one-stop, meaning a change in the shutter speed or f/stop. The tonal range is from Zone III to Zone VII. Anything under or over will produce sections with no texture. All camera meters and hand-held meters read a scene at Zone V, middle gray or 18% gray. Knowing this, you can under or overexpose your negatives to generate the mood or feel trying to be reached (49-52).
Now with all the information given, how can a print be made exactly as perceived? In a non-perfect world, the camera has limitations and so does the film. Knowing that a negative can only read five or six Zones, you must use the Zone scale as a basis for your print values. The camera reads a scene at Zone V, thus forcing you to use the Zone System to create the print trying to achieve. The example of the wedding can easily be fixed. As a whole, the camera reads the scene at Zone V, but just looking at the tuxedo, it looks like Zone II, while the dress and the cake are Zone VI. If the camera were adjusted down one-stop, the picture would than fall down one Zone lighter, making everything lighter. The tuxedo would have more detail, the dress would be lighter, and the cake would also be lighter. If the negatives were slightly overdeveloped, there would be more and distinct highlights, thus boosting the contrast.
The Essay on View Of Paul Actors Scene Camera
The film Pauls Case is by Lemont Johnson but is written by Willa Cather. Its about Paul, a sensitive high school student, felt very frustrated with his home life and his family's expectations that he would grow up to work in a factory or the steel mills as his father and most of his neighbors did. He was not close to anyone in his family and had no neighborhood or school friends. Instead, he spent ...
Works Cited
Adams, Ansel, and Robert Baker. The Negative. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981: 36-37, 49-52, 92.
Johnson, Chris. The Practical Zone System. Boston: Focal Press, 1999: 9-10.
