Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/03/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Chuck Warman <cwarman@wf.net> wrote: > IMO, politics and religion should be the only *absolutely* taboo subjects > here, if for no other reason than they piss people off at one another. We've done politics often enough, but I don't think we've tried religion yet, so here goes... Isn't the automation vs. manual control argument that runs as a subtext of much discussion here just a rerun of the Protestant Reformation? Manual operation is Protestant; nothing comes between the photographer and his God/ subject. Automation is Catholic, with those microprocessors and servo motors performing the same sort of role in image capture that priests and acolytes do in worship. The Leica rangefinder is the ultimate Calvinist camera; the M5 and M6 are creeping Papist laxity, sorta like the Church of England. Manual reflexes like the R6 are basically for the Jesuits. (Umberto Eco says something similar about the Mac versus Windows, I think). - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- jack@purr.demon.co.uk - Jack Campin, 2 Haddington Place, Edinburgh EH7 4AE