Sorry--I forgot my point: Rembrandt had the new science of chemistry for colors and oils. The Impressionists had the new brushes that were flat rather than round (machine made). Picasso utilized industrial mass production for art. In college I had a friend who had a Picasso ash tray (signed by machine)--$5.

Picasso and Rembrandt never had Photo Shop and they did just fine. [/quote]

People think technology started with Windows opening the Internet to us, or the atomic bomb, or airplanes. But it was technology that allowed the Sumerians to conquer the first Western civilization (3000 BC to 1000 BC)--mobile armies on horse and chariot; the Greeks and Romans to build the Greco-Roman civilization (1000 BC to 1000 AD)--armor and ships, cement and the arch; and the Barbarians to build the modern world (1000 AD to present)--the technologies of modern science such as gunpowder for industrialized war, rigid columns to support tall buildings, and the clock for world navigation.

The Greeks had one word, "techne" for our two words, "technology" (scientific know-how) and "technique" (the know-how of arts and crafts). The digital camera exemplifies both, yes?

Thanks, Don!

Exquisite, JC!

Thanks, Jack.

Spectacular, Clinton--or do you go by Snake Hound? I think maybe it was beastly cold up there?

Thanks, Mike!

Thanks, James.

Thanks, Joe!

I was very disappointed with 35mm film (I now think I must have had a defective Canon camera--exposure never worked no matter how I did it using the built-in meter). I moved to a twin lens 6x6 and it was glorious, especially seeing the negative enlarge in the darkroom without the quality disintegrating. Then I got a 4x5 press camera, then a Burke and James 5x7, and all was revealed. I read hundreds of books, including Ansel Adams, and as I managed a retail camera operation for 20 years, I had many people to talk with.

I got a digital--eventually--and used it to make "sketches." If I liked a shot, I came back with large format for a real picture. This saved a lot of the labor involved. However, maybe all along the reason large format was better was not so much in the film or the cameras, but in the fact that it forced me to take time on each shot. You think? Now I have the works for digital, but very little knowledge of Photoshop. And the online help does not help much because every edition of Photoshop has entirely different ways to do the same thing (and some essential concepts are never really explained). I have Elements, so I found a nice big book on using it--but often the screen is entirely different because Elements itself has many editions. I figured out how to make the gray sky blue (one picture) and the background rosy pink (one shot), but I don't remember how I did it.

I discovered a large format back that you use to replace the film back--it adapts the back of 4x5 to accept a Canon digital. Now I can test a shot, then insert film. I develop it (B&W) in a daylight tank, then scan and edit and print the modern way, as best I can. This picture was taken with the Canon digital on the back of a Linhof 8x10 camera with huge Carl Zeiss 360mm f4.5 Tessar lens, about 20 feet away, just tweaked a bit in Elements. I am not sure why I am still drawn to my LF stuff--I have no urge to write on an old typewriter anymore. The one real reason is that no digital sensor has anything like the data capture of a 4x5 negative, does it?

My first thought was that this must be the bike that ran over all the animals we see on the road. Up close, it is more grotesque. Anybody know what that stuff is growing on the bike?

I am an avid amateur, and my comments will be different from those of a professional--our objectives are often different, if only because the amateur may not care about efficiency. But here are my comments.
The classical traditional portrait is shot from 8 feet away. This gives a normal look to the proportions of nose, eyes, and ears. Closer, the nose is too big, and ears too small; farther, the three seem all to be about the same distance--flattened out without the normal sense of depth for a face. This is due to distance alone, not the lens used.
So if I shoot a head and shoulders view of a person (more or less, depending on how big the person is), I shoot at 8 feet with a longer than normal lens for the size of the sensor or film--the traditional proportions would be with a lens about 1.5x normal lens focal length, or a bit more. That would be 90mm on full frame 35, generally called a portrait lens; 105mm is called a baby lens.
For full figure of a person, or two (three snuggled up), I would use the normal lens for the format, more or less (still at 8 feet)--for full frame 35 (that is, 45mm to 55mm normal lens).
For a family or perhaps a small team, I would use, still at 8 feet, what they used to call "the wide angle"--35mm lens on 35mm full frame, trying to keep them in one plane of focus (or two, not far apart). Spreading them out is better than making them close, far, and in-between.
For a banquet or wedding group, or class picture together (30 to 100), we can probably dispense with the 8 foot rule because the individual people's faces are too small to give clear perspectives of nose, eyes, and ears--back up far enough and use a normal lens, or slightly wide. Such groups are typically shot in big spaces.
Your example, a family or office party situation in a typical room, is a common photo experience and we do not expect the people in it to look as they do in a formal portrait. We see the phenomenon from a personal, subjective perspective. So I would use as wide a lens as it takes, and reply upon the viewers of the picture to adjust their view of it accordingly.
The most normal common zooms that are sold in kits with cameras, or built in, are likely to cover the range above.
One last comment: the so-called wide-angle distortion (big nose, little ears) is a function of the distance of the subject(s), not focal length of lens; but it is also a function of the distance at which the photo is seen later (the distance from the eyes). A large print of a very wide angle shot of a face, if seen proportionately closer to the picture, will not look distorted anymore--the viewer will see what the camera saw, normally. One of the Deardorf boys published a neat formula for this--degree of enlargement of the negative multiplied by the focal length of the lens (regardless of format size) should equal the correct or normal perspective distance for the viewer of the photo. (An 8x10 negative shot with 12 inch lens, contact printed, should give normal perspective seen from 12"--the negative was printed without enlargement, or at a factor of 1x.) The shooter who has time on his or her hands can shoot each picture according to the size print to be made and the distance from which the picture will be seen. I once shot a picture to be seen at 5 or 6 feet, and to be hung behind a sofa for this reason.
Today, people are so accustomed to fancy photography that seeks to look different, that they can see almost anything as normal, and not complain. I know a very successful photographer who shoots everybody (full frame 35 sensor) with a 200mm lens, which is 4x normal. The perspective does not seem so important if you can capture the personalities in the most flattering ways.

I use a Canon digital on the back of large format now to test for film. Sometimes I just use the digital shot. My avatar here is digital from the back of an 8x10 camera.

Did they chimp with flash powder?

Nobody explained the etymology--is it a sort of acronym?

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