Ansel Adams Q

Morrisseeee

Looking back thru old internet 'Favourite links' I 'happened' on this Ansel Adams one:
http://www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams/
It shows photos from Adams (in large-ish size) from The National Archives in the US. But...........looking at them, especially the large versions, they are quite poor. Is this because they are a poor scan of the original ?, ie. very poor, or a poor digital capture of the picture ?, as I can't imagine his photos being that poor in quality !! especially after going thru his labourious task of hiking, taking the photo, developing & then printing :eek:

The above labouriousness(professionalism) is well outlined here>
http://www.coolantarctica.com/Shop/ansel_adams/moonrise_hernandez.htm
Click on the different photos to get a background or feel of what went into the 'making' of these photos.
/Eg: Imagine hiking (& climbing) with a load of heavy equipment to your destination, setting-up your 8*10 view camera (the conundrum of choosing the right set-up, filters,lenses etc), then waiting patiently for the RIGHT moment (if it ever arrives), and then (and this is the best bit for me) only having 12 exposures with you !!!

trishw78

ooo you forgot about not knowing if you got the shot untill you climbed back down and processed & printed.

Looks like bad scanning

charybdis

They're poor scans.

This photo from the archives.gov site is present in much better quality on Wikipedia.

Morrisseeee

Ah yes thats MUCH better, those scans are piss poor (maybe deliberetly so!).
I'm just remembering a few of the boardsies here went to Saltee Islands, imagine if you told them they could only take 12 photos, eeek. I know I'd definitley fill my 4G card anyway, but maybe there's a lesson to be learnt...........patience

DaireQuinlan

you're talking about ones like this ?

http://www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams/images/aad01.jpg

I'd say yeah, appalling scans. Some of them look as though they were scanned from dithered magazine or newspaper prints of the pictures.