Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/05/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>We could, and often did, go from shutter click to >finished paper in 30 minutes. If you are good and lucky, one exposure is all >you need. Thirty six is overkill. Bill Epperidge (former LIFE staffer and current Sports Illustrated speical projects photographer and the guy who captured the most famous picture of Robert Kennedy dying) told me that when he was at the University of Missouri, he used to shoot with a 4x5 speed graphic. Covered a football game with only four sheets of film. (And back then, they actually had a decent team! <G>) He said they used to develop in a darkroom with a dirt floor. Sounded a bit like grandpa's walking to school in snow stories, but it's true. Developing the skill to capture a game with four sheets of film stood him in good stead to become one of the premir photographers at LIFE and elsewhere. But he never could have gotten the landmark photo essay he did on herion addicts with a 4x5 Speed Graphic. It was a Leica back in the early 60s that made such a story sing. He has always been a tech-head too. Continually playing with new toys to see what pictures he could make. Unlike many today when many assume if you like equipment, you can't be any good. Back then, they knew the new tools could definitly make shooting easier. For us, it's could be just the opposite. Things have become so automated, and automatic, and fool proof, that our cameras can take too much attention from the shooting process by requiring us to push too many buttons before it does the specific thing we want. The law of diminishing returns seems to want to apply. ======= Eric Welch St. Joseph, MO http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch