7 - Survey photography

Summary

Surveys take many forms, and a photographic record is always desirable. Whether field walking, looking for unknown sites or examining details of known ones, environmental surveying, studying or comparing buildings or building elements, or recording artifacts in museums or collections, it is unwise to rely on memory and notes alone. The features that it is necessary to record photographically, and the techniques for doing so, differ for these several types of survey, although they have much in common.

So far as equipment is concerned, it must be remembered that nearly all surveys involve walking, whether across miles of steppe or through endless museum corridors. It is never easy to strike a balance between minimal weight and an adequate range of functions. It would not be sensible to attempt, for instance, a survey of hill-top sanctuaries in Greece carrying a 5 × 4 in monorail camera and all its accessories; on the other hand, it is frustrating to discover a remote site and be without the means of recording it.

A minimum kit might comprise:

1. Two 35 mm camera bodies, one for black and white, one for colour positive.

2. Either 28, 50 and 200 mm lenses, or one or two zoom lenses to cover the same range; the weight difference is not so disproportionate as it might seem – three prime lenses would weigh 700–750 g, two zooms covering the same range about 850 g, or a ‘super-zoom’ 28–200 mm about 700 g. If the survey is of buildings, the 28 mm lens could advantageously be replaced by a shift lens; if of artifacts in museums, a 50 or 100 mm macro lens would be more useful.

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