RE: [Leica] Use film, or block the panel - examples as requested

["Austin Franklin" <darkroom@ix.netcom.com>]

Hi Tim,

Okay - lets try that again...

> > Oh, Tim, I most certainly do get it, and I'd say it's you who
> doesn't.  It
> > has everything to do with usability, and sometimes, in order to
> be usable,
> > quality IS an issue.  Because some little P&S digicam has a
> lousy optical
> > viewfinder, as most in fact do, and the LCD is more "usable",
> that doesn't
> > say that in general LCD viewing gives you better this or that than a
> > viewfinder...it says the viewfinder in that camera is
> deficient, and that
> > the LCD is more usable.
> >
>
> Read my lips Austin - it has nothing to do with the quality of the
> viewfinder or better this or that. It's about different ways of
> seeing.

You are claiming that viewing an image in a degraded viewfinder is somehow
"better" (or why bother doing it, eh?) than viewing it with a clearer,
higher resolution, more tonally accurate viewfinder...and that somehow makes
it a "different way of seeing"?  Hum, OK...  But then you have to include
other, IMO valid "different ways of seeing"...like 5 shots of Tequila, as
well as smearing Vaseline over the viewfinder...as well as taking your
glasses off (or putting someone else's on, if you don't wear glasses)...and,
as I suggested before, Quaaludes...and any other method of distorting your
view of the image...

Of course I understand about different "ways of seeing" as you call it (it's
really a different way of viewing the image, but I know you like the
ethereal terms ;-), as I use rangefinder cameras, SLRs (both 35mm and MF),
TLRs and view cameras...but those three all have excellent viewfinders,
without a degraded image.  The claim appears to be that this method of using
a degraded view of the image you are taking is somehow providing you with
superior usability, is a notion I do not accept, having used LCD viewfinders
quite a bit.  I find their usability very limited, and only limited to P&S
applications where overall image quality is not required, and even at that,
I don't believe they are better than a respectable optical viewfinder.  I
find they work better on video cameras than on still cameras.

Shitake stones, anyone?

Austin

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