They were way ahead of their time. Bear with me for this explanation. To quote [1],
> f-number of an optical system such as a camera lens is the ratio of the system's focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil ("clear aperture").
In other words, this is a relative number. And as far "being sharply in focus" (stated reason for f/64 style) is concerned, for the same field-of-view angle, smaller sensor would require proportionally more open f-stop number to exactly match the look. 2-inch sensor with 90-degeree f/2 lens, would produce exact same depth-of-focus as 4-inch sensor with 90-degree f/4.
According to [2], Adams was using 6,5×8,5 inch negatives around the time (let's call it 8 inch "sensor"). Compare that to the 1/2 to 1/4 inch sensors [3] of iPhone 13. So what aperture latter would need to exactly match the picture f/64 group wanted?
(1/64) × 8 / (1/2) = 1/4 = f/4
(1/64) × 8 / (1/4) = 1/2 = f/2
As luck would have it, f/2 is pretty much bang-on the aperture of the same iPhone. In other words, when you take a photo with a current-gen smartphone, that photo would have, give or take, exact same depth-of-focus that group f/64 wanted. Everyone is group f/64 now.
For those not in on this long running Wikipedia in joke, this article started as and continues to be a venue for contributors to one up each other on the pretension scale. I think it’s going well so far.
Maybe I'm just naturally pretentious or something, but it doesn't read to me as anywhere near as pretentious as I would expect a Wikipedia article to be if that were true. Do you have some links or something to support what you say?
Do you have any source for such a claim? I've been a wikipedia editor for quite a long time, and have never heard of this and the article itself seems perfectly reasonable in form. It's also well sourced.
> f-number of an optical system such as a camera lens is the ratio of the system's focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil ("clear aperture").
In other words, this is a relative number. And as far "being sharply in focus" (stated reason for f/64 style) is concerned, for the same field-of-view angle, smaller sensor would require proportionally more open f-stop number to exactly match the look. 2-inch sensor with 90-degeree f/2 lens, would produce exact same depth-of-focus as 4-inch sensor with 90-degree f/4.
According to [2], Adams was using 6,5×8,5 inch negatives around the time (let's call it 8 inch "sensor"). Compare that to the 1/2 to 1/4 inch sensors [3] of iPhone 13. So what aperture latter would need to exactly match the picture f/64 group wanted?
(1/64) × 8 / (1/2) = 1/4 = f/4
(1/64) × 8 / (1/4) = 1/2 = f/2
As luck would have it, f/2 is pretty much bang-on the aperture of the same iPhone. In other words, when you take a photo with a current-gen smartphone, that photo would have, give or take, exact same depth-of-focus that group f/64 wanted. Everyone is group f/64 now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith,_the_Face_of_Half_Dom...
[3] https://www.dpreview.com/articles/6780391159/all-apple-iphon...