Mark was a fellow radio astronomer, full of insights. One day in a conversation about photography he said something that caused my eyebrows to lift: “Well, as we all know, color film is never sharp.” But what Mark was getting at was this: As the consequence of a few million years of Darwinian evolution, our eyes have three types of color receptors, casually described as red, green, and blue.
Remember when Paul Simon crooned, “Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away”? That classic film may have given you nice bright colors, but only on sunny days. In its early incarnations, Kodachrome’s film speed—its sensitivity—was 10, or slower than Homer Simpson.
In real-world shoots, both camera and subject are often moving. Six generations of photographers have fought this problem in their quest for images as sharp as a zoot suit. And nowhere is this fact of photographic life more obvious than when you’re trying to freeze the movement of wildlife. Whether you’re bagging African megafauna or trying to capture backyard beetles, stopping the motion is part of the assignment. So how do you do it?
We’ve all seen them: night shots of some wind-weathered rock formation in the American Southwest, backed by a dramatic, star-spangled sky. Earth, the universe, and everything.
Your first thought: “What sort of unaffordable equipment does it take to make a photo like that?” Your second thought: “You know, a 16x20 nighttime pic would sure look good above the pool table.”
Panoramas are easy to wish for, but, until recently, were not easy to get. To shoot high-quality panos often required special cameras that could rotate their lens while simultaneously advancing an aperture slit across a curved film plane.