Re: [Leica] Useful camera features?

[Donal Philby <donalphilby@earthlink.net>]

Shawn London wrote:
> 
> savings.  In the same manner, autobracketing, for instance, is a feature
> of convenience, not necessity, which does not really improve your
> photography.
> 
> It helps to keep things in perspective by remembering that "greats" like
> Cartier-Bresson, Capa and so forth did their best work without the luxury
> of even TTL metering.

In some cases autobracketng would be of tremendous benefit, doing more
quickly what is tedious by hand, and allowing one to indeed capture
decisive moments with the correct exposure.  

The greats you mentioned had several operating conditions that are
luxuries today for most pro work.  First, they often had far more time
on an assignment to wait for situations that would work.  Secondly, 
they worked mostly in BW where exposure latitude is great, and much
could be "fixed" in the darkroom.  How do you think C-B would fare
guessing (educated guessing, of course) with Velvia??  Ask a any former
newspaper photographer who was suddenly forced to shoot only Chrome
instead of negative film what their reaction was.  I would also submit
that many of the "great" pictures of the past would not pass technical
muster with editors today.  Technical quality standards have changed. 
Even at Nat Geo you won't any longer see Kodachomes with serious
underexposure and dark shadows on faces, etc.  We see more and more
highly creative strobe lighting and flashfill that gives us the ability
to create to images that were impossible before, and tell stories
(animals at twilight for instance) that could not be told with available
light.

Even writers, who realistically need no more than paper and pencil, have
taken to the computer for the ease of editing it provides.  

We all have tools in our toolboxes we seldom use.  But when the car
breaks down at midnight on a deserted road, they can come in mightly
handy.  

donal
- -- 
Donal Philby
San Diego
http://www.donalphilby.com