Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/08/23

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Subject: [Leica] Re: Monaghan the Clueless replies...
From: Jim Brick <jimbrick@photoaccess.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 08:41:43 -0700

Robert,

I'm not surprised...

I completely agree with you in every respect. And you have my sympathy with
respect to LUG attacks. What I have discovered over the years, is that
there are a lot of "photographers" who actually do not understand the
"craft" of photography. They don't know the difference between incident and
reflected light. They don't know how light metering works. They don't know
about the exact plane of focus and how everything else falls in the
confines of Circle Of Confusion. How the COC changes with image size and
f/stop. What is acceptable and what is not.

But they will argue vehemently about which meter is best, that AF is better
than MF, and any other argument that suits their mood at the moment.
Totally without knowledge of the craft. This is one reason that I have
reduced my posting to the LUG to a bare minimum, and I do massive deletes
by both subject line and author. [Yes Horst, I read your posts... :-) ]

I completely understand the AF technology. I have written the in-camera
firmware that drives AF systems. I described to the LUG, sometime back, how
AF works and explained, in detail, that there is no way that AF can focus
"better" than a good, smooth, MF lens. The computer program in the camera
does NOT know what is important and even if it did, it may not be possible
to focus there. A human, with good or corrected eyesight, one who
"understands" how DOF and focus actually works, can out focus AF anyday.
Perhaps the "in the middle of it" sports photographer, or photographing a
running cheetah (toward you), AF can be a great help. But for critical
focus, for most subjects, by most photographers (those who know the craft
of photography), most of the time, MF is without question, the better system.

There is no argument. It is simply fact.

Jim

PS... I played with the new Contax medium format autofocus system a few
weeks ago. I pointed it at a Lucite display stand on the camera store
counter. About 20' away. Super easy to focus on by hand. The AF system went
berserk! If you've never seen a medium format AF lens "hunt"
uncontrollably, you are in for a treat. We all had a good laugh.


At 06:13 AM 8/23/99 -0500, Robert Monaghan wrote:
>As a subscriber and poster to this LUG, I'm kind of surprised at being so 
>defamed (as clueless, an idiot...) by so many LUG people who obviously 
>haven't taken any time to read my page on the problems with Autofocus (at
>http://www.smu.edu/~rmonagha/third/af.html). What's the deal?