Originally posted by Wheatfield If you have ever seen an original Adams print (I have), you wouldn't need to ask that question. I have the last set of "The Camera/The Negative/The Print" series that Adams published. One of the revisions dealt with the then budding world of digital imaging. To paraphrase Adams, he said that the new technology was very exciting, and that the next generation of photographer was going to have some remarkable tools.
Do I think Adams would have "Gone Digital"? Yes, I absolutely think so. I suspect he would have been the original image stitcher, since even now, a single DSLR capture doesn't hold up when compared to 4x5 inch or larger film.
Part of the magic of Adams work (and any LF work) is the ability to walk up to the picture, and examine it from a few inches away and see detail, not noise or grain or the smooth, detail free mush that we get with digital when it is magnified past its size limit. This inability to resolve really fine detail at large print sizes would likely have been the only thing that would have hobbled digital capture from Adam's point of view.
My question was one of esthetics and psychology not one of hardware and
technology and it's limitations.
Other than, perhaps, photojournalism, I'm not interested in what the
photographer in fact saw but rather what he thinks he saw - in Adam's
own word what he "felt".
So when Adam's says:
"Now I give it to you as equivalent to what I saw and felt." I have to
wonder what this means.
If Adam's purpose in taking a shot is to only convey as accurately as
possible exactly what was in front of him at the time he pressed the
shutter - in his own words what he "saw" than that reduces the
photographer to a mere technician.
If however his purpose is to convey what he "felt" rather than a mere
technical facsimile of the scene in front of him that's a very different
purpose.
It seems to me these two purposes are mutually exclusive - that they are
a contradiction in terms. To the extent you favor one you must,
necessarily compromise the other.
BTW I have seen original Adam's prints.