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Photography Ethics and the Limits of Film and Cameras

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A photograph is a representation of an event and/or place, but no photograph can faithfully record what can be seen with your eye. The human eye has a tremendous dynamic range that is unmatched by any film or digital imaging system that has been made by humans. Film records contrast different than perceived by the eye. The final print or projected transparency add another level of changes from the original live scene. The eye can resolve incredible detail in its central field of view and because the eye constantly moves, we get a perception of sharpness everwhere in the scene. The eye dynamically focuses as we scan from close foreground to distant background. It tracks moving objects well, resolving detail on the moving object as well as stationary objects. It dynamically adapts to lighting conditions maintaining color balance (thus we see white as white in various lighting conditions, from "bluish" shadowed areas to a red sunset). And it does all this fast, on the order of 1/30 th of a second!

Film, on the other hand, does not have the dynamic range, nor the exact same color response as the human eye. Lenses on cameras have one focal length (zoom lenses one focal length at a time). Film has limited resolution and grain. Thus to record a scene with enough detail, dynamic range, and keep it all in focus, the photographer must push the technology to its limit,

One method to record a scene with sufficient detail, is to use large format cameras. I use 4x5 view cameras; the film is 4 inches by 5 inches (image area slightly less). Fine grained film with 4x5 records similar detail what can be seen with your eye. View cameras allow tilting of the film and lens planes to allow the focus to change (e.g from near foreground to the far background) to keep more of the scene in focus. Even so, small lens apertures are necessary to keep the typical scene in focus (a large depth-of-field). Fine-grained film has slow speed. All this leads to long exposures with typical landscape photography scenes. Exposures of 1 to 2 seconds and longer are common, even in full sunlight. This limits what kinds of scenes can be photographed. For example, for everything to be sharp, the flowers and leaves can't be moving due to a slight breeze, so most large format landscape photography is done on days with no wind. Animals are rare in such photos, because they are usually moving.

We've already established that no photograph is a perfect representation of what you see with your eye. The digital photography era is opening up new possibilities for getting around some of these limitations (and of course, as with any new technology, abuses by in the perception of some).

Landscapes with Wildlife

As part of my photography, I have turned to mostly digital work, The images I obtain are currently on normal film with 35mm and 4x5 cameras. The film is developed and scanned. I then edit the images to remove film defects, dust, compress dynamic range (so the image can be printed), and ocassionaly adjust color balance.

Digital editing opens up new possibilities for getting beyond the current limits of film+camera technology. One of these is wildlife in long exposure landscape photography. I have been attempting to include wildlife in my landscape photos, sometimes with great sucess. Often, the wildlife are moving so that they are blurred in the long exposure landscape photos. Sometimes I'll encounter wildlife in a scene, photograph them with 35mm cameras, then set up the 4x5. Sometimes the animals are still there, many times they move on. I'll photograph the scene with or without the animals with the 4x5. Back home, with the scanned images, I can place the animals shot with the 35mm into the 4x5 scene. Any images with digitally placed animals will be labeled as such.

Another problem, mentioned above, is wind bluring flowers and vegetation. In some cases, when there is a light breeze, I typically wait (sometimes hours) for lighting, best clouds and a calm period (only a few seconds are needed) to get the best image. In such cases, I'll photograph key elements in the scene ( e.g. a flower in the foreground), zoomed in with 35mm to record details that might be blurred in the large format image. Again, back at the computer, blurred components can be replaced with sharper images of the same thing. I generally will not label images with every digital fix such as described in this paragraph.

The resulting images I "create" are technical representations to get around the limitations of camera/film technology. I do not subscribe the the view that such manipulation is unethical. I am not trying to show you an exact duplicate of what the film recorded, but what I liked/remembered about being in that location.

Digital modification of large-format images (and even high-resolution scanes on 35mm images) requires hours of work, even for small changes, like fixing a blurred flower. Thus, in any of my images, the vast majority of the image has had no manipulation. I try to make the best image in the field, as that saves the most time. And again, any image to which an animal was added to the 4x5 image, even if it was there in the scene moments before the image was obtained (and photographed with a different camera) will be noted in the caption.

An example of the use of two cameras and digitally merging to show a scene like that observed with my eye is shown the Mt. Evans and Curious Young Mountain Goat image.

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Roger N. Clark

Last updated Nov 12, 2001