[Leica] Photography - It's all in knowing how.

[lrzeitlin at aol.com]

 George,
	You and Ted are missing my point. I am not against non-automatic KISS cameras. In fact I'm all for them. All I'm saying is that it is wrong to assume that a novice photographer can pick up one and get consistently properly exposed, correctly focused pictures. Your results, and those of Ted, and those of most of the LUGGERS using basic film cameras are the result of years of experience in photography. You say that you can estimate light intensity to within half a stop of that given by a light meter. Could you do that when you picked up your first camera? Can your grandchild do it? I know that I couldn't do it. My wastebasket was filled with over exposed, under exposed, and out of focus negatives.
	I was a consultant to Kodak back in the bad old film days. Much of the research effort was to widen picture taking tolerances so that the average film buyer would get acceptable results. Most amateur film, both B&W and color, had at least three stop tolerance. Kodachrome was the exception and sales to amateurs were comparatively low. Kodak introduced the first auto exposure camera, the Auto 620, almost three quarters of a century ago in an effort? to let the inexperienced expose film of the 30s properly. The most widely sold cameras of the 30s and 40s were Brownies with fixed focus lenses, one exposure, and a curved film plane to minimize the effect of lens aberrations. KISS was the mantra then.
	Of course technology of the last quarter of a century has enabled the encapsulation of most of your, Ted's and my mechanical skills into a silicon chip worth only a couple of dollars. It is hard to believe that that's all our years of experience is worth but unfortunately it is true. I resisted it for years. My favorite camera is a Leica IIIC. I drove a sports car with a manual transmission. But now I drive an auto transmission car and use a DSLR. Life is simpler now. Choosing content is another matter but great artists have been doing it for hundreds of years. No camera necessary.
	And George, I showed your comment:
"Photography IS pretty damn simple.
Focus. Shutter. Aperture. Expose (meaning press the damn button)." to one of my neighbors, an indifferent photographer but a world class surgeon. He told me that a similar thing could be said about brain surgery. "Make the cut, expose the brain. remove the impacted tissue, and close the wound." It's so simple, a child can do it. It's all in knowing how.
Larry Z