[Leica] Re: Is the camera important?

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (lrzeitlin@optonline.net)]

B. D, Colen wrote:

<< Give a beginning photographer a cheap camera
with inferior optics, and you may get different results than if you give
that same person an easy to use, well designed camera with superior optics -
and I don't mean a Leica M because many beginning photographers really
struggle with rangefinders. :-)>>

------

There is much truth in this. I am one of those mossbacks who learned 
photography in the Jurassic age of total manual control. As a stringer for 
the Boston Globe in the early 50s I was handed a scruffy well used 4x5 Speed 
Graphic, six film holders and a Heiland flash gun and I was sent out on 
assignments to sink or swim.

Over the years I learned how to estimate focusing
distances with reasonable accuracy, how to judge the light, the shutter
speeds that were necessary for stopping various kinds of action, what
filters to use to get the effects I wanted, etc. In due time I gained 
sufficient experience in the technology of photographny that it became

second nature and I could concentrate on the esthetics of the picture.

Then the manufacturers encapsulated all my hard won knowledge in a
silicon chip the size of my little fingernail and made cameras
automatic. Now any boob could possess what I had learned by plunking
down a few bucks at the camera store counter. Like most phiotographers of 
that era, I resisted the change. It negated my years of experience and 
forced me into direct competition with newcomers who would be totally lost 
if their batteries died.

And, of course I was wrong. Photography isn't about technology. It is about 
creating images that others want to see. The neophyte with a mistake proof 
camera is free to concentrate on the scene on front of the lens, not the 
camera settings. Artistic interpretatikon is something totally apart from 
technical proficiency. Fortunately for the real artists amongst us, a very 
good quality camera encapsulating all I learned in 20 years is available for 
less than the 1954 pric
e of a Leica IIIf. And I venture to say that in the hands of an average 
photographer it will take better pictures. The creativity of a novice 
photographer is facilitated by good quality cameras that are easy to use. 
Who cares if it is film or digital. It's the vision that counts.

Larry Z