Comments on: F/8 And Be There – the Unclear Origin of a Photographic Mantra and What It Really Means

By: Bob Jarman

Bob Jarman — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:24:59 +0000

First time viewer – my lucky day for a great read! I remember when I first started taking pictures, my dad showed me the table on the side of the film box, or the enclosed instruction sheet. He said follow ‘this’ depending on bright sun, clouds, overcast sky etc. Somehow it always seemed to work whether Tri-X 400 or Kodachrome 25. Thanks for a wonderful article!

By: Alan

Alan — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 22:38:22 +0000

f8 is my go-to for most shots. It just works.
Please don’t say ‘aughts’ – there’s no such thing. It’s perfectly okay to say ‘2000s’, or maybe at a push ’00s’. This term is sensible to most people – and doesn’t make it sound like you are apeing a Tom Waits song. Thank you.

By: M for filM

M for filM — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:42:53 +0000

Love this article! Just the perfect combo between nerdy photographica details and the personal touch. I do think of my images are “ok for me myself and I” and that’s indeed liberating to focus on the being there. Thanks!

By: chris

chris — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 13:37:27 +0000

Almost certainly a historically inaccurate myth too, but I recall “F/8 and be there” being attributed to newspaper owner Randolph Hearst, when asked by a hopeful photographer seeking to improve his chance of getting work. This quote appeared in photography books and magazines from the 1960’s and 70’s, which I read around 1980-ish, before Google indexed those other later sources. The context definitely referred to the Graflex type of 4×5 press cameras and to how Leica and Rolleiflex cameras would change news photography.

By: Philip Birch

Philip Birch — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 00:24:31 +0000

I’ve never heard the phrase. But my default aperture is f8 for sharpness. Even a cheap lens is great at f8. I only use smaller for macro and wider for low light

By: Bill

Bill — Sun, 12 Jun 2022 11:57:19 +0000

I thought, probably wrongly, that it was due to Eliot Erwitt, because it was in the Foreword of one of his books as an unattributed maxim, along with a quote from the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, namely Erst muss Mann den inneren Schweinehund beseigen, basically you have to conquer the inner coward or inner weakness. I’ve come to suspect over time these are probably examples of Erwitt’s sense of humour. I’m not even sure that it is an actual quote from Von Richthofen.