Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/05/14

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Formal education needed?
From: Invisible Man <megamax@abacom.com>
Date: Mon, 14 May 01 19:31:29 -0400

>It is evidently the case that this demand for qualifications is not
>introduced as a serious safeguard against quaks or charlatans, but as a very
>blunt and conspicious instrument to fend off and discredit the work of one
>specific individual only.

I'm sorry to see you berated, Mr Puts.
You sure have one quality I honor a lot: dedication.

I took time to read many of your critiques and
think you really try to be discriminant
and help others make wiser choices
in a field that's submerged by big time advertising
and P.R.

I don't own Leica equipment and should have
done so when my personal circumstances were
more financially appealing. Nonetheless, I can
get a share of the excitement just reading your
careful product analysis.

On of the fields I worked in was audio: at first,
I thought I knew a lot. When I decided I would
not bullshit my customers with so-so half truths,
it took me hundreds of hours of personal study,
what we call "midnight oil" to get to a point 99%
of my answers were scientifically founded, asking the
technicians for the other 1%.

It does not make me an acoustics engineer,
but one heck of a dependable audio person,
even at the audiophile level. My passion was to get
more accurate sound, critically justified, for a given budget,
by careful system matches and lots of listening,
never to get the most money out of a customer ...

It seems to me you do the very same with optics
and have the budget or luck to enjoy and use LEICA
equipment. Being critically discriminant after LEICA engineers
keep refining a design to reference level
surely must be quite an exercise, probably requiring
you to study arcane optics texts to keep up with
the most appropriate testing techniques in the lab,
then take the time to check out the lenses to know
about their real limits (which I did with audio equipment)
and real life photo performance (and long term value).

Autodidacts made a world of a difference in the last
few hundred years where critical inventions are concerned.
An academic degree is fine but it's not the end of the world !

For me, your dedication to such excellence, your honesty,
the actual usefulness of your well written texts,
most appropriate in context, certainly deserves kudos.
And, I'm quite sure the LEICA engineers enjoy reading
your work because they know when a fellow is a real pro.

Best regards and keep up your excellent work, Sir.

Andre Jean Quintal