Re: [Leica] Leica-Users List Digest V2 #298

[Summicron1 <Summicron1@aol.com>]

re the last couple of strings:

being fairly new to this, I see how it works now: someone suggests an idea and
everyone else beats it to death. 

Metering: By now it's certainly clear to me that there is no ultimate method
of metering, as if I didn't already know that. I sent that list of gag methods
of taking pics (ie--pros shoot lots of polaroids and bracket like hell) to my
brother the commercial photographer with more light meters and hassy lenses
than you can shake a stick at and he said that was absolutely accurate. The
ONLY way to get exact, precise, totally controlled exposures is to be anal
retentive about exposures to an impossible degree that only a $1,000 a day fee
can justify. He shoots 8 by 10 transperencies for some medical company and was
showing how he'd had to nudge the contrast up just a tad on one medical
instrument he had photographed while not changing the others in the same frame
- -- a lot of work and he STILL ends up fixing things on the computer.

I have attempted the zone system in the past and only ended up with a lot of
reasonably exposed but over-thought about pictures. They were static,
lifeless, hugely posed and not at all fun. I'll take a slight loss of shadow
detail and go for a teriffic picture, a total image, that knocks your socks
off, any day. 

As to the fellow who is being chastised for criticising someone else's work on
a web site -- sorry, no sympathy for the guy who posted the pics. I'm in a 3-D
folio where we send pics to each other for criticism, and the only way you get
better is to listen to critics, even if you are sure they're wrong. Criticism
has to be a bit blunt or it is worthless.

Should the guy be criticised? He put them on a web for 50-million people
around the world to look at, didn't he.