Both are very old techniques. The large depth of field is achieved by a with a large format camera and a very small aperture. Sometimes they would have to be done with a very slow shutter speed to get a proper exposure, which would necessitate a tripod and could only be done with more static subjects like still lifes and landscapes. This was the philosophy of the famous Group f/64. Edward Weston was one of the most famous of the group.BBP wrote:It's very hard to get the lighting right in such a place, I wonder how he got the quality he had. Must've been a large shutter speed.
It does seem unrealistic as literally everything on the picture is in focus. And that church picture, goodness, I'd have a hard time sleeping if I'd been there. Oh, and that picture with the fireplace and the shoes in front of the chair: there's a sign that says "welkom", welcome, on the fireplace, in Dutch.
The great exposure in all parts of the photos was pioneered by Ansel Adams (another member of the Group f/64). The Zone System he developed took into account the optimal exposure for each part of the image. This was achieved by carefully composing the image before hand and later in the darkroom with techniques like dodge and burn. It was not unusual for Adams to spend an entire day preparing for a shoot.
Some modern cameras have a feature to automatically bracket a shot, in other words, take three images in one shot, adding one stop under and one stop over the chosen aperture. The three can be combined later to use the best for the shadow areas, the highlights and the mid tones. This is easily done in a modern photo editing programs that can do layers.
By the way, Adams should mean something to us. One of his favorite subjects was Half Dome.
