[Leica] RE: Zooms are virtual insurance

["BIRKEY, DUANE" <dbirkey@hcjb.org.ec>]

Mike Johnston wrote:

And hey, to Duane Birkey--to each his own! I _loathe_ zooms, and consider 
them
virtual insurance against developing a photographic eye.  
<snip>.
For all I know, you may do well enough with
multiple focal lengths, and I'm sure there exist many photographers who 
are
enabled by the freedom of using unlimited focal lengths. Me, I like to 
learn to
see like the lens sees, then pluck pictures out of whatever visual 
panoply I'm
presented with. 

************

I work with both zooms and fixed lenses.  Zooms and motors are must for 
many things I photograph and I'm expected to come up with a lot of good 
shots in a very short time.  Changing lenses means I can't shoot.   I do 
some available events with 2 bodies and 5 lenses and I spend a lot of 
time changing lenses and I miss a few shots because I can only anticipate 
so much.  It's easy to get lazy with zooms I agree, and worldwide, there 
are probably more bad pictures taken with zooms than good ones, but they 
do allow you to work quickly and to capture images you'll miss otherwise.
 
My philosophy of seeing what the lens sees is a bit opposite of what Mike 
said,  I have the photo pretty well thought out before I lift the camera 
to the eye.  I've already picked out what subject, from where, and how I 
want the background to appear.  I then choose the lens which is most 
appropriate and fine tune composition and everything else at that point.  
I will usually shoot it a couple different ways as I do a lot of slide 
shows that require a series of images rather than a singular image.  

For me, I could care less what the lens sees.  I don't think it sees 
anything on it's own, rather it records what I want to show, how I want 
it to appear at the moment I choose.  I think it is better to learn to 
see in one dimension as the lens sees without having to look through the 
camera.  Once you learn to do that, zooms are great.  You'll recognize 
what works and what doesn't, and miss far fewer pictures.  It's even more 
important as you use M-series cameras as you can't see shallow depth of 
field with them just as depth of field preview on SLR's only shows you so 
much.

Having said that,  Mike is the editor of my favorite magazine and none of 
this should be taken personally.  Sounds like a good topic for 
Vestal..............

Duane Birkey

HCJB World Radio
Quito Ecuador