Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/05/31
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The comparison between LCDs and ground glass is an interesting one. The pictures I take with the LCD are substantially more like my LF pictures than my 35mm pix, but they have a freedom I have never been able to achieve in LF (I've seen some of Tim's LF pix and he is a lot looser than I ever was). There is also a slightly alienated quality to shooting something using the LCD which is quite difficult to replicate when using a direct-vision viewfinder, although I am getting better at it. The first picture I took which made me realize there was something special about shooting digital via the LCD was this one: http://www.pinkheadedbug.com/paw/pages/week5.html I had photographed this spot using the 4x5 camera several times, with pitifully poor results. One day just after I bought the CP5000 I had it in my cycle pannier as I was cycling to work, and as I passed through this spot, I thought to myself, damn, that's the picture. I pulled out the digi and framed it on the LCD (it was bright so I could hardly see) and when I got to work, uploaded it, and there it was. I can't tell you how many sheets of 4x5 I wasted trying to do the same thing. There is something close to Eggleston's idea of 'shotgun photography' in using a digi with the LCD (for those who don't know, W Eggleston at some point gave up looking through the viewfinder and called the resulting photographs 'shotgun photos' -- in that they were aimed by instinct like a shotgun rather than by eye like a rifle and scope). What you discover is that sometimes when you loosen your grip on the compositional aspects of the photographic game, rather than the compositions becoming weaker, they become stronger, more complex, more confounding and confrontational, more troubling even. It certainly makes you look through a viewfinder differently afterwards. On Friday, May 30, 2003, at 09:30 PM, Tim Atherton wrote: > >>> He didn't say it wasn't visible, rather you would never have seen the >>> composition. >> >> How is that? If it's visible on the LCD, it's visible in the >> viewfinder...and the composition is identical. >> > > Abandon the engineer stuff for a minute Austin - no one is talking > about > what is or isn't visible and what is or isn't empirically identical. > We are > talking about how the eye and brain perceives it as different. > > Have you ever used a LF camera? > > If we are talking about a dig cam with an optical viewfinder (as John > is) > and an LCD screen, the view and composition isn't identical - one is > still, > to some extent, 3 dimensional and the other is flat - 2D they are > different > > tim > > > -- > To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html > > - -- John Brownlow pictures: http://www.pinkheadedbug.com warblog: http://www.unintended-consequences.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html