Digital photoshoot of the "Silver Beauty"

A strong case can be made that the panoramic photograph in its broadest conceptions has been, since the invention of photography, a key element in ‘modern’ ways of looking, in particular because it has been used to visualize the major issues and concerns of modernity on the grandest scale.

Simple definition of a panoramic photograph is difficult, as so many ways have been used by photographers to achieve an image that goes beyond the conventional formats. Some sources insist on the image being made by a 360-degree rotational camera, but this would exclude many images described as ‘panoramic’ by their makers. Circular, fisheye images are one example; the continuous strip images of the periphery camera another.

Soon we will touch the sky... digital photoshoot of the ANNA II

Up until the 1990s, SLR was the most advanced photographic preview system available. But the recent development and refinement of digital imaging technology with an on-camera live LCD preview screen has overshadowed SLR's popularity. Nearly all inexpensive compact digital cameras now include an LCD preview screen allowing the photographer to see exactly what the CCD is capturing. However, SLR is still popular in high-end and professional cameras, because the pixel resolution, contrast ratio, refresh rate, and color gamut of an LCD preview screen cannot compete with the clarity and shadow detail of a direct-viewed optical SLR viewfinder.

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Focus can be adjusted manually by the photographer or automatically by an autofocus system. The viewfinder can include a matte focusing screen located just above the mirror system to diffuse the light. This system permits accurate viewing, composing and focusing, especially useful with interchangeable lenses.

Give me wings to fly..... Digital photoshoot of a flying oldtimer

Most SLR cameras permit upright and laterally correct viewing through use of a pentaprism situated in the optical path between the reflex mirror and viewfinder. Light is reflected by a movable mirror upwards into the pentaprism where it is reflected several times until it aligns with the viewfinder. When the shutter is released, the mirror moves out of the light path and the light shines directly onto the film, or in the case of a DSLR, the CCD or CMOS imaging sensor.

Digital photoshoot of a flying oldtimer

Prior to the development of SLR, all cameras with viewfinders had two optical light paths: one path through the lens to the film, and another path positioned above ( TLR or twin- lense reflex) or to the side ( rangefinder). Because the viewfinder and the film lens cannot share the same optical path, the viewing lens is aimed to intersect with the film lens at a fixed point somewhere in front of the camera. This is not problematic for pictures taken at a middle or longer distance but parallax causes framing errors in close-up shots. Moreover, focusing the lens of a non-reflex camera when it is opened to wider apertures (such as in low light or while using low-speed film) is not easy.

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The single-lens reflex (SLR) camera uses an semi-automatic moving mirror system which permits the photographer to sometimes see exactly what will be captured by the film or digital imaging system, as opposed to pre-SLR cameras where the view through the viewfinder could be significantly different from what was captured on film.

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Many professional-quality film cameras use medium format or large format films. Because of the size of the imaging area, they have higher resolution than the current top-of-the-range digital cameras. It is estimated that a medium format film image can record around 50 megapixels, while large format films can record around 200 megapixels (4 × 5 inch) which would equate to around 800 megapixels on the largest common film format, 8 × 10 inches, without taking into account lens sharpness. A medium format DSLRs provides from 42 to 50 megapixels, which is relatively similar quality to the medium format film quality.

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Image quality

Spatial resolution

Several measures can be used to assess the quality of still photographs, the most discussed being the pixel count, presumed to correlate with spatial resolution. This is measured by the quantity of picture elements (pixels) in the image sensor, usually counted in millions and called "megapixels". Measuring the resolution of both film and digital photographs involves numerous issues. For film, this issue depends upon the size of film used ( 35mm,Medium format or Large format), the speed of the film used and the quality of lens fitted to the camera.

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There is no major difference in principle between a lens used for a camera, a telescope, a microscope, or other apparatus, but the detailed design and construction are different.

A lens may be permanently fixed to a camera, or it may be interchangeable with lenses of different focal lengths, apertures, and other properties.

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A photographic lens (also known as objective lens or photographic objective) is an optical lens or assembly of lenses used in conjunction with a camera body and mechanism to make images of objects either on photographic film or on other media capable of storing an image chemically or electronically. While in principle a simple convex lens will suffice, in practice a compound lens made up of a number of optical lens elements is required to correct (as much as possible) the many optical aberrations that arise. Some aberrations will be present in any lens system. It is the job of the lens designer to balance these out and produce a design that is suitable for photographic use and possibly mass production.

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With the coming of World War II photographers, including Margaret Bourke-White, Edward Steichen, W. Eugene Smith, Lee Miller, and Robert Capa, documented the global conflict. The war was a stimulus to photography in other ways as well. From the stress analysis of metals to aerial surveillance, the medium was a crucial tool in many areas of the war effort, and, in the urgency of war, numerous technological discoveries and advances were made that ultimately benefited all photographers.

Digital photo - impressions of "good old times" - tuned oldtimers

The Impact of New Technology

The development of the 35-mm or “candid” camera by Oskar Barnack of the Ernst Leitz company, first marketed in 1925, made documentarians infinitely more mobile and less conspicuous, while the manufacture of faster black-and-white film enabled them to work without a flash in situations with a minimum of light. Color film for transparencies (slides) was introduced in 1935 and color negative film in 1942. Portable lighting equipment was perfected, and in 1947 the Polaroid Land camera, which could produce a positive print in seconds, was placed on the market. All of these technological advances granted the photojournalist enormous and unprecedented versatility.

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In California during the 1920s and 30s Edward Weston and a handful of kindred spirits founded the f/64 group, taking their name from the smallest lens opening, that which provides the greatest precision of line and detail. This small and unofficial group—which included Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, and Willard Van Dyke—came to dominate photographic art, overshadowing the pictorial aesthetic. They and their imitators eschewed all post-exposure handwork, and worked with 8 × 10-in. view cameras in order to obtain the largest possible negatives from which to make straightforward contact prints. They limited their subject matter to static things: the still life, the distant or closely viewed landscape, and the formal portrait. The influential teacher Minor White became known for his poetic, visionary work related in technique to this straight approach.

Digital photoshoot from motor - details of an oldtimer

The Aesthetics of Photography

Seeking to determine the particular aesthetics of photography, the American Berenice Abbott and the Frenchmen Eugène Atget, André Kertész, and Henri Cartier-Bresson developed intensely personal styles. The exponents of surrealism in France and of futurism in Italy and the various German art movements that were focused in the Bauhaus all explored the medium of photography. The international exhibition “Film und Foto,” held in Stuttgart in 1929, helped to make formal a purely photographic aesthetic. The works exhibited combined elements of functionalism and abstraction. Photographic subject matter shifted from the past to the present—a present of new forms in machinery and architecture, new concern with the experience of the working classes, and a new interest in the timeless forms of nature.

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Taking as their precedents the work of such men as Jackson and reporter Jacob Riis (whose photographs of New York City slums resulted in much-needed legislation), documentarians like Lewis Hine and James Van DerZee began to build a photographic tradition whose central concerns had little to do with the concept of art. The photojournalist sought to build, strengthen, or change public opinion by means of novel, often shocking images. The finished form of the documentary image was the inexpensive multiple, the magazine or newspaper reproduction. For a time the two traditions, art photography and documentary photography, appeared to be merged within the work of one man, Paul Strand. Strand's works combined a documentary concern with a lean, modernist vision related to the avant-garde art of Europe.

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The power of the photograph as record was demonstrated in the 19th cent., as when William H. Jackson's photographs of the Yellowstone area persuaded the U.S. Congress to set that territory aside as a national park. In the early 20th cent. photographers and journalists were beginning to use the medium to inform the public on crucial issues in order to generate social change.

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Stieglitz's own photographs and those of several other Photo-Secessionists—Edward Steichen, one of his early protégés; Frederick Evans, the British architectural photographer; and the portraitist Alvin L. Coburn—adhered with relative strictness to a “straight” aesthetic. The quality of their works, despite a pervasive self-consciousness, was consistently of the highest craftsmanship. Stieglitz's overriding concern with the concept “art for art's sake” kept him, and the audience he built for the medium, from an appreciation of an equally important branch of photography: the documentary.

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In revolt against the entrenched imitation of genre painting known as “salon” photography, Stieglitz founded a movement which he called the Photo-Secession, related to the radical secession movements in painting. He initiated publication of a magazine, Camera Work (1903–17), which was a forum for the Photo-Secession and for enlightened opinion and critical thought in all the arts. It remains the most sumptuously and meticulously produced photographic quarterly in the history of the medium. In New York City, Stieglitz opened three galleries, the first (1908–17) called “291” (from its address at 291 Fifth Ave.), then the Intimate Gallery (1925–30), and An American Place (1930–46), where photographic work was hung beside contemporary, often controversial, work in other media.

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In opposition to the painterly aesthetic in photography was P. H. Emerson and other early advocates of what has since become known as “straight” photography. According to this approach the photographic image should not be tampered with or subjected to handwork or other affectations lest it lose its integrity. Emerson proposed this philosophy in his controversial and influential book, Naturalistic Photography (1889). Appropriately, Emerson was the first to recognize the importance of the work of Alfred Stieglitz, who battled for photography's place among the arts during the first part of the 20th cent.

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To prove that photography was indeed an art, photographers at first imitated the painting of the time. Enormous popularity was achieved by such photographers as O. J. Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson, who created sentimental genre scenes by printing from multiple negatives. Julia Margaret Cameron blurred her images to achieve a painterly softness of line, creating a series of remarkably powerful soft-focus portraits of her celebrated friends.