Re: [Leica] Kill...Tripod...Thread...*

["Roland Smith" <roland@dnai.com>]

I have a special concern about the tripod I will use with the new laptop
that I will acquire.   Therefore, I propose merging the two ongoing threads
to laps and legs.

Should I opt for a Mac to use in conjunction with wooden legs made from
apple wood or an IBM type with state of the art carbon fibre?  Is aluminum
more universal serving both the Mac and the IBM type?

Roland Smith
- ----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2000 1:23 PM
Subject: [Leica] Kill...Tripod...Thread...*


> My dear Luggers,
> I'm beginning to feel like a fly trapped on flypaper--the more I say,
> the more I am misconstrued. I don't usually have this much trouble
> making myself understood. I am clearly at an inarticulate low ebb, and
> not putting the least bit of thought into my use of language.
>
> One more attempt.
>
>        (deep breath)
>
> I'm not angry.
>
>        (click and exhale...er, or maybe it is exhale THEN click)
>
> I'm not implacably dead-set against the use of tripods.
>
> I meant only to say that anyone who uses a tripod for all or almost all
> of his or her photographs is perhaps not using 35mm as it was meant to
> be used, since one of the format's great felicites is hand-holdability,
> portability, and operational flexibility...in that it enables
> photographers to take photographs more quickly than tripods can be set
> up, or in places where tripods cannot be set up (such places do exist:
> in free-fall, say, having just leapt from an airplane with a parachute
> strapped upon one's back. That's one place where a 35mm camera can be
> used, but where tripod would be useless, or at least cumbersome.)
>
> From this it was intended to follow that many 35mm photographers--even
> good and great ones--take many shots hand-held. Dare I inch out farther
> upon my precarious limb, and claim that _most_ photographers take _most_
> of their 35mm photographs with the camera hand-held? Is that rash?
> Forgive me.
>
> Then I tried to assert that most any tripod--I had to qualify that: most
> any tripod that is decently designed and competently deployed--will hold
> a camera steadier than you can hold it in your hands.
>
> From this I expected people to make the logical leap that virtually any
> tripod will give you steadier shots than you can hand-hold.
>
> With me so far? I hope so, because by this time in the bygone thread I
> was already sinking deep into the tar-pit of crossed purpose and
> miscommunication.
>
> My point was that, since you hand-hold most of your shots anyway, and
> most any tripod will hold the camera steadier than that, then
> IT...DOESN'T...MATTER what your tripod legs are made of.
>
> Attacked for this radically iconoclastic (yet somehow still dogmatic)
> viewpoint, I then went further (too far, I know--very much too far--I'm
> so rash, such a hothead, and, believe me, I suffer for it in this life)
> and tried to claim that most people could never tell, from a slide or a
> print, whether the Leica that made the slide or the print was perched
> fixedly upon, let's say, a Gitzo tripod made of steel and aluminum, or
> upon a Ries tripod made of wood.
>
> For this, I was ridiculed by all those manifestly in possession of that
> skill. Here, we spoke of marimbas and glockenspiels, URLs were posted,
> and a battery of the many references arrayed against me were cited.
>
> I'm now feeling chastened, humbled--nay, humiliated, having been forced
> to submit to the great indignity of the public (not to mention facile,
> puerile, superficial, and inept) armchair psychoanalysis of the
> faux-erudite Bernard, an excruciating fate for anyone (although this
> sentence ought to send him scurrying for that dictionary of his again
> like a rodent after crumbs, heh heh)--and contrite. I shall never again
> attempt to tell anyone to get a life and stop worrying about what his
> tripod legs are made of. I've come around. It makes a lot of difference
> in photography; it is an important technical issue; science backs the
> idea.
>
> I've learned my lesson. The next time I see a particularly vivid and
> clear photograph exhibited at a museum, I will do the right thing and
> murmur sagely, "wooden tripod legs, most probably." Luggers within
> earshot will nod in approval, and my reputation will begin to be
> restored from the low depths to which it has sunk.
>
> --Mike
>
> * Disclaimer: not every statement in this message can be interpreted
> literally by looking up the dictionary definitions of the words used;
> the scoundrelly writer is using rhetorical tricks and devices.
>
>