The Negative (Ansel Adams Photography, Book 2)

If you are interested in photography and in making excellent photographs whether digital or traditional film its important to read Ansel Adams. He did the photography and the development of film and the printing and his photographs of the landscape especially known for photographing Yosemite are exquisitely perfect in black and white. In this book that is part of a series of 3 he gave us everything we need to make great photographs. Why would someone who is a digital photographer read this book? Its to understand the basics the foundation of photography. This book is The Negative and in digital photography what you get is the negative and the print together and you want to understand what you have and what you can do make that photograph or that negative in black and white photography what you want it to be what you visualized when you saw the image in real life.
The book The Negative is sometimes difficult to follow cause he was truly a Master and most of us are not so just keep reading to get whats of value to you as a reader and a photographer
This book The Negative is part of a three book series includes
The Camera
Basic Techniques of Photography that has revised edition from his student John Schaeffer
Read all these books if you are committed to excellence in your photography
JG

Concisely written in Adams' own scholarly style, "The Negative" is a valuable resource for photographers learning the foundation of technically correct (as opposed to generally good) base exposure in a variety of scenes, both pedestrian and those that are more conflicting. One must, however, consider that more than 4 decades have passed since the techniques were founded and the technology described can be viewed, in many cases, with a quaint tug at nostalgia. Today's evaluative and matrix metering systems, programmed along the Zone System, do a remarkable job where once exposure was tedious and error prone, and this is where learning the Zone System to competently handle difficult scenes is a useful addition to a photographer's "book of tricks". But despite the clarity of explanation and steps, Adams' Zone System remains a complex, intertwining system to understand (theory) and apply (field application); it never was and never will be a five-minute task. For B&W fine art photographers, "The Negative" holds a timeless reference quality with many techniques remaining the solid benchmarks for fine art production. In summary, a tremendously good read and a most valuable addition to any learned photographer's library.

The Negative (Ansel Adams Photography, Book 2)

I am new to large format photography. This book is extremly informative and focuses just on negative construction, manipulation and b&w processing. An excellent and timeless resource! Excellent for all formats!

If film shooting is interesting to you (and you should; I'm 26 and grew up with cameras, then I move to digital, and recentlly, I discovered the wonders of a darkroom and BW prints) then this book is a MUST Well, the whole series)!!! there aren't enough words to emphasize my feelings over the 3 books of Ansel Adams (camera, negative & print)

If you don't believe me, then please take a deep look at Ansel's master BW work... that should convince you!!!

Ansel Adams was a master of photography but not the most exciting storyteller , in my opinion.

This book is one that you should read as part of a complete education in photography, but there are some long sections in it. The parts of the book explaining Adams' zone system are very worthwhile and great stuff. Much of the rest of the book is only interesting if you are shooting film (not digital), as it deals specifically with darkroom processing.

Read about the zone system here or somewhere else, but learn it. If you are a film photog, read this whole book. For digital shooters, you might want to read only the sections of interest.