Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/06/25
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Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net> wrote:
> And I simply fail to understand the frantic love for
> wide-angle lenses, other than that they radically distort
> the background.
Marc, you've hit the nail right on the head!
I was thinking about this the other day. Most published
photography I have seen in the last year or so has been
either in-yer-face-wide-angle or else super-long-telephoto
"trombone lens" shots. And not just press conferences,
but *all* mag PJ images.
Almost nothing in between. How come?...
And as for some of the shots, sheesh. Nearly all the wide
angle ones hope to cover up their compositional laziness by
the gee-whiz distortion, while the trombone shots (and I
am guessing here) seem to be more of a he-man thing -
"My lens is bigger than yours, therefore..."
Recently I covered an international triathlon even at the
Sydney Opera House forecourt. All the photogs ('xept me!)
were walking around with either 18mm's or lenses the size of
their legs. Can't help thinking they were all basically
taking the same shot. A quick scan of the following day's
newspapers only confirmed this.
& BTW, I was the only L-man in the crowd. The rest were all
slavishly Canon EOS1/1n. Yep, not a single Summicron, or lux
or even Nikon that day. :^(
Andrew Nemeth
VR MEDIA SOUND PHOTO JAVA
nemeng Warrimoo Australia
www.nemeng.com