I found this short video of Steve Sherman going through taking a picture and discussing how he uses movements. I found it interesting because this scene could have been in England. We seem to see a lot of US photography from their spectacular National Parks, so this made a nice change.
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Steve Sherman - Outdoors.
- Thread starter David M
- Start date
I found this short video of Steve Sherman going through taking a picture and discussing how he uses movements. I found it interesting because this scene could have been in England. We seem to see a lot of US photography from their spectacular National Parks, so this made a nice change.
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- Aug 9, 2016
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- 855
I agree David, it could have been in England. It looked a very nice spot.
It's a pity that we didn't actually see the photographic image on the ground glass, or a finished photograph.
And I'm sure I won't be the only one to find Mr. Sherman's description of how to get everything in focus completely unintelligible. If anyone was unsure at the start about how to use camera movements to get everything sharp, then they would likely be even more confused by the time he had finished....
Alan
It's a pity that we didn't actually see the photographic image on the ground glass, or a finished photograph.
And I'm sure I won't be the only one to find Mr. Sherman's description of how to get everything in focus completely unintelligible. If anyone was unsure at the start about how to use camera movements to get everything sharp, then they would likely be even more confused by the time he had finished....
Alan
It is an attractive scene.
There is a brief flash of an image, right at the end, but in my viewing, it's overlaid by temptations to carry on to the next video. It might be unfair to say this, but I'd have framed it differently. I might have printed it a little less grey too, but that's a personal choice. Very sensible advice on having a friend available to hold back intrusive branches.
I do agree, it did seem very odd to me that he shows neither how the movements affect the image, nor the parts of the scene he's discussing. Is it more a guided tour of the knobs on his very attractive new camera, perhaps?
Mr Sherman has accumulated a devoted following for his methods of developing film, so it's nice to see that he sometimes gets out an about to generate more fodder for his darkroom. He takes his cap off outdoors too.
And he has the same tripod head as me. Can't be all bad, then.
I found another video in the series with a graffiti version of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (with hoop earrings) on a wall behind him. If I understand it, he says that front tilt can give you sharp focus (on a traffic cone in his example) from "one millimetre" from the lens. You may care to form your own judgement on this.
There is a brief flash of an image, right at the end, but in my viewing, it's overlaid by temptations to carry on to the next video. It might be unfair to say this, but I'd have framed it differently. I might have printed it a little less grey too, but that's a personal choice. Very sensible advice on having a friend available to hold back intrusive branches.
I do agree, it did seem very odd to me that he shows neither how the movements affect the image, nor the parts of the scene he's discussing. Is it more a guided tour of the knobs on his very attractive new camera, perhaps?
Mr Sherman has accumulated a devoted following for his methods of developing film, so it's nice to see that he sometimes gets out an about to generate more fodder for his darkroom. He takes his cap off outdoors too.
And he has the same tripod head as me. Can't be all bad, then.
I found another video in the series with a graffiti version of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (with hoop earrings) on a wall behind him. If I understand it, he says that front tilt can give you sharp focus (on a traffic cone in his example) from "one millimetre" from the lens. You may care to form your own judgement on this.
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2016
- Messages
- 855
My mistake David. I missed the actual photograph at the end. I must have been nodding off! You say you would have framed it differently. I would too. I thought the foreground tree on the right was a bit intrusive. And yes, it looked a bit grey to me too.
Alan
Alan
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- Dec 19, 2017
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I seem to remember shooting a similar image in the New Forest back in the 1980's with my Wista 45DX 
Having taught numerous people how to use movements with LF camera for many years I take a different initial approach to Steve. Start at the extremes so 16 mins into the second video Steve does, understand the extremes an everything else is easy.
Ian
Having taught numerous people how to use movements with LF camera for many years I take a different initial approach to Steve. Start at the extremes so 16 mins into the second video Steve does, understand the extremes an everything else is easy.
Ian
Here’s another one of Mr /Sherman;s videos and this may be the first in the series. Nicely improvised, simple demonstration of a lens’s circle of illumination. Purists may wonder about “exact identical.”
Mr Sherman is regarded very highly by many, but I would like to venture a criticism.
Each single piece of advice seems sensible - “turn this knob and that happens” - but there is no overall exposition of the fundamentals of the large for a camera; we plunge straight into detail. (He well may have published one, which I have missed, and I must apologise for my lack of diligence if this is so.)
Because of this, it must be confusing for a novice. I found myself constantly thinking that I would have put it differently, or begun further back in the narrative.