Blog Entry

Ansel Adams

"I came across this extraordinary scene when returning to Santa Fe from an excursion to the Chama Valley. Thu sun was edging a fast moving bank of clouds in the west. I set up the 8x10 camera as fast as I could while visualizing the image. I had to exchange the front and back elements of my Cooke lens, attaching the 23-inch element in front, with a glass G filter (#15) behind the shutter. I focused and composed the image rapidly at full aperature, but I knew because the focus-shift of the since lens component, I had to advance the focus about 3/32 inch when I used f/32. The mechanical processes and visualization were intuitively accomplished. Then, to my dismay, I could not find my exposure meter! I remembered the luminance of the moon at that position was about 250 c/ft^2; placing this luminance on Zone VII, I could calculate that 60 c/ft^2 would fall on Zone V. With a film of ASA 64, the exposure wourd be 1/60 second at f/8. Allowing a 3x exposure factor for the filter, the basic exposure was 1/20 second at f/8, or about 1 second at f/32, the exposure given."

Caption to Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico in Ansel Adams, The Negative

Every person I know that owns the book has the passage marked, or in my case have a book worn enough that it just opens to that page. I was flipping through the book again this weekend, and as always read this passage and just have to laugh a little. The man nonchalantly describes more or less the equivalent of steering a bicycle down an obstacle course while doing a headstand on the seat. It's so complex yet completely intuitive to him, all I can do is laugh in response. I truly respect and envy large format photographers. They practice a skill far above me and my exposure bracketing.