Edward Weston close-ups - how??

jernejk · May 4, 2017

How did Edward Weston manage to get his subjects in focus? Using my 5x7, 300mm lens and bellows extended to the max (I have no extension rod), I am only able to get a scene with almost 50cm width across (so no real closeup), but even at that setup the DOF is crazy narrow.

OK, further extending the bellows will get me closer, but what about depth of field? What kind of lens is needed for that kind of work?

Patrick Robert James · May 4, 2017

Use a wider lens and move closer. That will eliminate your bellows problem, and also get you more enlargement. That is also what Weston was doing in effect since he used a normal lens more or less compared to your slightly long lens. And, for the most important part which is getting them in focus-

Most of the time when he was shooting portraits he used a Graphic Super D camera which is basically a slr, so he focused right before he took the picture. There is a passage I think in his Daybooks where he mentions how getting the Graphic camera freed him up to shoot gestures, like Tina singing, instead of static portraits since he could hand hold it and move around. I think I remember that anyway, could be mistaken. He also mentions enlarging the negatives at times for his 8x10 contact prints. Don't really know how he did that though. Must've been some kind of camera dupe because he didn't own an enlarger.

If you like Weston, you should really read the Daybooks. Really. One of the best autobiographical accounts of an artist. I wish they would release an unedited version one day. I guess ol' Eddie left quite a bit on the cutting room floor.

Hope that helps you.

bdial · May 4, 2017

He also used very small apertures and consequently very long exposures, at least on the still lifes. Also mentioned in the daybooks, as I recall, the vegetables and shells were exposed for a few hours in some cases, for example.

Modern photographers tend to avoid apertures like f/64 because of sharpness loss from diffraction, but the trade-off is less depth of field. I don't think anyone will complain that his aperture was possibly too small for optimum sharpness on Pepper 30.

Another good read, having to do with Edward, is Through Another Lens, by Charis Wilson, who is the lady he met in the timeframe where the published portion of the Daybooks end.

Jim Jones · May 4, 2017

Some accounts say he also used an ancient Rapid Rectilinear with the aperture modified to stop down to f/256. 8x10 contact printed negatives captured at this aperture would appear fairly sharp if the subject had few sharp-edged details.

Ian Grant · May 4, 2017

Jim Jones said:
Some accounts say he also used an ancient Rapid Rectilinear with the aperture modified to stop down to f/256. 8x10 contact printed negatives captured at this aperture would appear fairly sharp if the subject had few sharp-edged details.

Particularly as he used a Pyro developer as well which introduces edge effects.

Ian

ColinRH · May 4, 2017

For still life on my 5x7 I use a 180 Symmar stopped to f32. Obviously not a proper LF macro but produces very acceptable images.

jernejk · May 4, 2017

Hmm... according to this site a 180mm lens on a 5x7 camera needs to be 0.2m from the subject to capture a full-face portrait, and DOF would only be 1.3mm!

Playing with parameters I just can't find a combination which would work, theoretically.

jernejk · May 4, 2017

ColinRH said:
For still life on my 5x7 I use a 180 Symmar stopped to f32. Obviously not a proper LF macro but produces very acceptable images.

Could you share some examples?

removed account4 · May 4, 2017

check out : (there was a url link here which no longer exists)
some of your questions and concerns might be adressed there in the "macro forum"
rather than raking out your lens, an alternative might be to get close up attachments or diopters and figure it out from there
i've done close up and macro work using both methods and they both work fine.

good luck !

ColinRH · May 4, 2017

Jernekj If you look on my gallery you'll see a few examples with the 180. There are also a few when I used the 8" Beck on its Thornton Pickard.
It undoubtedly helps that I am making salt prints on art paper rather than commercial printing paper which immediately reduces apparent sharpness so some diffraction actually doesn't really become objectionable.
I have also used close up lenses(filters) with some success and a reversed 55 Micro Nikkor but that does need an almost flat subject.

Luis-F-S · May 4, 2017

Guess he was a photographer (ie he knew what he was doing)! Long exposures are not that unusual, I made several exposures a couple of weeks ago with a 12" Dagor which at f/45 required exposures in excess of 10 minutes! Don't know why exposures of several hours should surprise anyone. The Pepper's not going anywhere nor was it worried about diffraction!

mike c · May 4, 2017

jernejk said:
Hmm... according to this site a 180mm lens on a 5x7 camera needs to be 0.2m from the subject to capture a full-face portrait, and DOF would only be 1.3mm!

Playing with parameters I just can't find a combination which would work, theoretically.

Are we talking about portraits of people or still life peppers ? There is a size difference.

Joe VanCleave · May 4, 2017

Regarding diffraction in LF, we often forget that apertures like f/64 for a 180mm lens is about a 3mm aperture, not that small. Diffraction is related to the physical size of the hole being small enough such that the toroidal area within several wavelengths of the edge is a significant amount of the opening's total area; the light bundle passing near the edge is what gets diffracted, not the center. Now, f/64 for small formats can be much smaller in actual size, resulting in significant diffraction.

~Joe

juan · May 5, 2017

Jim Jones said:
Some accounts say he also used an ancient Rapid Rectilinear with the aperture modified to stop down to f/256. 8x10 contact printed negatives captured at this aperture would appear fairly sharp if the subject had few sharp-edged details.

His RR lens had the old US stops. I have one of these lenses, and when I had it mounted into a modern shutter with modern f/stops, the US f/256 stop translated to modern f/64. When calculating exposure don't forget the increase needed for bellows extension. I would expect Pepper 30 to have a good bit of extension.

removed account4 · May 5, 2017

Luis-F-S said:
I made several exposures a couple of weeks ago with a 12" Dagor which at f/45 required exposures in excess of 10 minutes! Don't know why exposures of several hours should surprise anyone.

only 10 mins ... i regularly make exposures that are 1 hour to 12+ hours long

Drew Bedo · May 5, 2017

To step away from creating the final image en-camera for a moment, consider shooting at a smaller reproduction ratio and cropping/enlarging the composition you want from the negative.

Side-stepping a direct print from an enlarger, you might consider scanning the negative, doing some minor digital manipulation and outputting a negative in a larger format. I recognize that this may not be the creative process you desire.

A friend of mine does something similar by scanning LF negs from antique cameras in formats not standard for today, then creating paper negatives for use in albumin printing.

Weston and Adams used the processes, tools and methods available to them to create the images they envisioned. I feel that we should too. . . .we are some 75 years or so further down the road (from the 1930s) so we have available to us all the tools and techniques that they did . . . .and so much more.

Mike Crawford · May 5, 2017

No one mentioned Scheimpflugs yet???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheimpflug_principle

ColinRH · May 5, 2017

Yes - I use that too

removed account4 · May 5, 2017

you can't use SP with a graflex slr.
(neither the front or rear standard can be manipulated/moved)
its like using a 35mm camera or 120 format camera ...

John Koehrer · May 6, 2017

Weston used an 8X10 Seneca for most of his LF work. One lens he used for a very long time was a 12-21-28"
Turner Reich convertible.
Keep in mind the films available to him in the 20's-30's weren't really fast so the hours long still life
he shot weren't uncommon for him.
There are a couple of instances in the daybooks where he refers to his subject moving because a truck passed by or perhaps
a pepper had moved during the exposure.
Think about prices too, in his prime he was lucky to get $5 for a print, Where's professor Peabody & his wayback machine
when you need him?
The day books are one of the most interesting sets I have ever read.

Lachlan Young · May 6, 2017

John Koehrer said:
Think about prices too, in his prime he was lucky to get $5 for a print, Where's professor Peabody & his wayback machine
when you need him?

This is an oft repeated canard - and no one cares to note that that archetypal '$5' translates into the equivalent of the mid to high hundreds of 2010s dollars. A not insignificant sum of money even in today's market.

loman · May 7, 2017

well 5 dollars in 1933 is 92,15 dollars today using the following calculator (I just picked 1933 as a random year when weston would have been active):

http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1&year=1933

Lachlan Young · May 7, 2017

loman said:
well 5 dollars in 1933 is 92,15 dollars today using the following calculator (I just picked 1933 as a random year when weston would have been active):

http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1&year=1933

I'd suggest it's better to look at it from GDP per capita rather than CPI as the CPI is not intended to cover luxury commodities such as fine art, but rather everyday staple goods - try the calculators at https://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/relativevalue.php

Mark Minard · May 19, 2017

Patrick Robert James said:
If you like Weston, you should really read the Daybooks. Really. One of the best autobiographical accounts of an artist. I wish they would release an unedited version one day. I guess ol' Eddie left quite a bit on the cutting room floor.

Is there more? I thought everything that escaped him throwing it into the fire had been released.

Wayne · May 19, 2017

Mark Minard said:
Is there more? I thought everything that escaped him throwing it into the fire had been released.

Are you thinking of Brett? I dont remmber Edward burning anything but its been decades since I read his writing.

Edward Weston close-ups - how??

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