Ansel Adams is best known for his work in... Yosemite Park known. That's where it's difficult Large format camera dragged up mountains far too high at inhumane hours just to hope for the right light. Landscape photography in perfection.
Personally, he gave me almost 30 years ago photographic vision taught: through the book "The Negative". Why this is obviously no longer being produced is a mystery to me given the rampant analog wave. In the book, Adams not only reveals his method of developing negatives, as the title might suggest. The important thing about the book is the exact explanation of how an optimally exposed negative comes about. Through the one he developed Zone system Back then I was given a tool that I could use to help me even difficult lighting conditions can decipher in my mind's eye. And the great thing: the system still works today. Without any compromises. Technology has advanced further and the inferiority of photographic material to the human eye has remained. The zone system helps to find an implementation to get well-exposed image results despite technical inferiority - even without camera automation, 3D matrix system, camera-internal image database and whatever these tools are called in modern DSLR cameras...
Ansel Adams foresaw this development, or at least let it be so Quote assume:
With a few exceptions, systems are now manufactured according to demanding quality standards, the entire built-in intelligence of which is intended to prevent the photographer from straining his own!
Since the zone system helped me a lot back then and is still floating around in my head today, I'll explain it too at my workshops : )
In the series with the "Negative" book by Ansel Adams, there is also "The Positive" - I also have it in my cupboard, but it is not quite as overwhelming and since it also deals in great detail with setting up a darkroom, it is probably no longer so "up to date" - and the book "The Camera", which I do not own. Perhaps you can find "The Negative" in your local library. The zone system is explained there in an easy-to-understand manner on 60 pages. In my opinion, this helps more than many Photoshop tutorials 😉
Ansel Adams is great, he was a great photographer and looking at his pictures is like diving into another world. But with the zone system I'm not sure if that really came from Adams, isn't that more likely from Fred Archer? Adams has spread it widely, though, that's true.
... the two of them worked this out together around 1939/40 and Adams then propagated it vigorously; That's why his name is often associated with the zone system.
The system is simply great because it is so amazingly simple; However, with digital snapshots (as with color film (and especially slide)) you should keep in mind that the maximum is 8 f-stops. Well, today's professional models that work with 16 bit color depth also have 10, but everything below that is limited...
Hello,… I bought “The Negative” in English this summer at the König bookstore in Cologne.
My edition was printed in 2010, here is a link to the publisher's website where you can also get “The Camera” and “The Print”.
http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/authors_Ansel-Adams-%281004351%29_Bibliography.aspx
Thanks for your comments. Very helpful and interesting!
[…] Another saying is said to have come from Ansel Adams: “Twelve pictures in a year is a good quota.” Let's see if it comes to that […]