Funny story from samys salesman

[izzypizzy]

My friendly neighborhood samy's salesman told me a funny story the other day. I mentioned my recent trip to yosemite to him, and he asked me if he ever told me his yosemite story, I said no.. so he told it to me.

He says a while back he took a trip to yosemite, and he was walking around on some trail with his equipment, and at the top of this trail, he saw an old man setting up his tripod very slowly. Then all of a sudden he sees the old man spitting on his lens! Naturally, the salesman walks up to the old man, and tells him that in his bag he has a proper lens cleaner, if he's trying to clean his lens..

The old man laughs, and tells him he's not cleaning his lens, he's spitting on the lens, so as to make a soft focus shot.

The salesman thought he was crazy, and walked away laughing. On his way back down the trail, two people walking up stopped the salesman and said "Did you see who's up there?! It's Ansel Adams!"

Needless to say, the salesman was pretty embarassed. He said since then he had tried spitting on his lens, but with unfavorable results.

Just thought I'd share that with you.

Has anyone ever heard of spitting on their lens for a soft focus? lol

[Mike R]

I would never think of spitting on my equip, But maybe that is why my images are not as great as his! :lol: There will never be another Ansel Adams. Thanks for sharing the story

[NIftyBobby]

thanks for sharing. made me chuckle. i think i'll go spit on my lenses if you'ld excuse me.

[saravrose]

great story.. sounds like some kind of photographers urban myth.. but great story.

sari.

[lmelendez]

LOL... great story!

[primoz]

Has anyone ever heard of spitting on their lens for a soft focus? lol
Spitting? No, but using vaseline is pretty normal thing for such things.

[firstfirefly]

Spitting? No, but using vaseline is pretty normal thing for such things.

I was going to add that I've heard about vaseline... :D

[sdommin]

Sounds like an urban myth to me, too. From what I've read about Ansel Adams, he would never spit on his lens to make a soft focus shot. He would never make a soft focus shot, period. He was all about ultimate sharpness and realism.

[ron chappel]

I know that many have used the 'breath on the lens' technique to get a soft effect ,but has anybody ever tried this on the sensor?

I did once just to see what it looked like:D

[izzypizzy]

I believe the story :)

About Ansel Adams never using soft focus, that's untrue, I just read an excerpt from his book "Examples, The Making of 40 Photographs", and he talks about one of his images (which was soft focus), and explains about a soft focus lens that he used for the image.

[ron chappel]

Come to think of it,ansel was a member of the 'f64' club- a group of like minded photographers

If i remember rightly they chose that name partly for it's cynical humour (because f64 is not very usable even on a larger formats?)