And, I'm truly not saying that to brag; quite the contrary. I'm saying that if I can do it, likely anyone with a teeny bit of experience can. It ain't tough. And, it teaches you a thing or two about exposure and your camera.
I know, we're not talking tough, low light exposure conditions here, but still, it's a good thing to know, like if the batteries go dead, and like me, you use a mechanical camera.
Now, as good as HCB was, no one was (or is) better than Shel Belinkoff, late of this list (I wonder how old Shel is doing these days? Gotta e-mail him one of these days...). A list member once said that Shel could get the right exposure with his eyes closed - he ~felt~ the sun's rays on the back of his head, and that was all he needed. <vbg>
cheers, frank
"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
From: Bob Walkden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
A lot of his work is online at the Magnum site. I assume - but could well be wrong - that it's been scanned from the negatives as much as possible. It would certainly be interesting to know.
Nevertheless, a number of people who've worked at Magnum as interns or even became Magnum photographers have commented in print about seeing his negatives. I'm not aware of any especially adverse comments.
In the days before built-in meters it was quite common for people to be able to judge exposure accurately enough. Film boxes came with some exposure guidelines for 5 or 6 lighting situations, and these are easy enough to learn. That was what my father used to do until he bought an auto-exposure Canon in the 1980s. After that he never got a correctly exposed photograph.
People who wanted to learn more about it would make a note of the exposure
settings they'd used, and adjust their print exposure & development times
accordingly. Being that close to their own work, and referring back to
their field notes, would help next time they were shooting. I've always assumed
that this is one of the reasons why people published their exposure settings with
their photos - to help others judge useful settings for particular
situations. Otherwise the information strikes me as useless to other
people.
Incidentally, the Leica shutter mechanisms are apparently not very precise. Probably not more than other mechanical shutters, but obviously within the tolerance limits for film and printing materials. As other people have said, exposure is not that precise a matter.
-- Cheers, Bob mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/bcomm&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca
