$200M garage sale?

Just saw this linked on Ken Rockwell's site. Apparently somebody found 65 lost negatives made by Ansel Adams, arguably one of the most influential landscape photographers. He bought the boxes for $45 and apparently they are worth near $200 mills but more importantly they provide a record of Adams' artistic development (sorry for the pun) in that era. This also reminds me of a very interesting video I saw recently where you can see Adams at work in his darkroom. A lot of his images were made to shine in the darkroom from the rough (raw) negative.

EDIT: an interesting footnote is placed on this number on the excellent "online photographer" website. Apparently the veracity of the claims is not widely accepted and we are dealing with an echo chamber effect here mostly caused by the $200M number that might have been pulled out of thin air (to use a more polite term than the author of the post linked to).

Kodachrome

See this page for an absolutely fantastic slideshow of famous and less famous images taken on the legendary Kodachrome film. From Digital Story.

Resolution of stitched panoramas

I got inspired by an interesting post on Luminous Landscape about medium format digital and the new numbers on them posted by DxOmark. Because DxOmark does not account for actual resolution, the medium format backs appear to do worse than many current DSLRs. Of course, that is not a correct comparison as the whole point of these backs is resolution - the one thing the test does not measure. The article goes overboard with a flawed comparison to audiophiles but hey. These medium format backs are a superb solution for landscape photographers that want to shoot digital. They are just very expensive. For what they offer probably good, but very far out of my reach. A good alternative would be a large or medium format film system, but that is not my preferred style mostly due to the difficulty or cost in getting acceptable scans. My solution to this dilemma has been stitching. I either shoot handheld or use a little jig that rotates my camera around the nodal entrance point. A better solution would be a tilt-shift lens, but those are quite costly. I was curious how my method would compare to the medium format backs. The highest resolution these offer is 39 Megapixels. Here is a recent example I made using my D300 and a 24 mm lens (the kit lense zoomed to this value!)



This image is rendered at about 41.4 Megapixels, which is about half of the 105 Megapixels that it would be when rendered at the full resolution from hugin. The field-of-view is equivalent to 10 mm on a crop sensor. Here is a 1:1 blowup from the area marked with the red rectangle.



As you can see superb detail, even at only half of the maximum resolution. Even though I would love a medium format digital system, for now, until I win the lottery, this stitching method gives me outstanding quality. The medium format would be free of the problem that you need a subject that doesn't move (fast running water is not an issue BTW as you can see here or here).

Outdoor Photographer

I noted previously that I got my image among the finalists in an outdoor photographer contest. I also received my copy of this magazine a few days ago. I always enjoy the magazine, especially the photographer's columns. It is however, funny to see that it is extremely rare for the cover photograph to be made by any of the cameras, lenses, etc. that the magazine endorses. This month for example had an outstanding cover done by the late Galen Rowell. He made the picture using a Nikkormatt FTN, a standard 35 mm lens and 25 ISO film. Funny how much this contrasts with the banners superimposed on the photograph about the "best DSLRs for true B&W" and "maximum quality" from your digital camera. Galen Rowell's photo is truly superb showing that indeed it is the photographer that matters instead of the gear. This is just standard 35-mm film, not even medium or large format.

Film vs digital?

Saw this on a Dutch photography blog. A comparison by a British technology show of absolutely giant blowups of studio shot images from a D700 and A F4 using the same lens. Can you guess which one won? Now guess when you know they used ISO 400 film. While interesting and they are certainly correct that in this comparison the digital camera will be the clear winner, if you're a landscape photographer and you plop a good ISO 50 film into any old film 35 mm SLR, you will not match it with a D700. You'll need a 25 MP DSLR to match the resolution of Velvia 50 for 35 mm technology for example.

Pete Caluori

A good friend, Pete Caluori just put up his website after working and mulling over it for ages. Pete works almost completely in film and uses amazing cameras that capture on film with sizes over 8x10 and even panoramic images. He also prints using resurrected alternative processes with Palladium salts or the Van Dyke process. His photographs are quite amazing and their radiance is something that cannot be readily expressed in the limited palette of the web. Check his website out over here.

My most popular flickr images

One of those interesting things about flickr is that you can check which of your images are most watched. For my flickr stream, the following 10 come out on top:

	#1: Boulder and Blue Lake • 830 views
	#2: It's alive! • 493 views
	#3: Dawn at the tip of White Crack at Canyonlands National Park • 477 views
	#4: Precipice • 433 views
	#5: Dune clouds over the front range • 357 views
	#6: Lake Haiyaha in the mist • 332 views
	#7: sunset 11/20/06 • 286 views
	#8: Blue Lake reflection • 284 views
	#9: workflow • 279 views
	#10: Rushing into the sunset • 268 views

What I find interesting about this list is that #9 is an image I put up for this blog and whose only way of being viewed is people clicking on it on the blog. That's great and must mean it is being read. It is probably just because it is a post about lightroom ;). Also interesting is that the most popular image (also the most favorited) is made using my old film camera. Strangely in the interestingness series, different photographs show up than in the most viewed or most favorited series.

Old photographs

I've been going over old photographs I made on film before I ever got a digital camera. Posted a few on my flickr page. I had forgotten about these images and they are a veritable treasure chest. Here are a few:



I need to find a negative/slide scanner to get them at higher resolution.