I wouldn't want to be without spot metering, AEL, aperture priority,
shutter priority, honeycomb metering, DX coding (which as well as
setting ISO gives the camera information for flash photography),
wireless flash, predictive focussing, exposure compensation, flash
compensation. I agree everyone should learn the basics if they are
serious about photography but you don't need a relic to learn it on. It
is just as important to learn about DOF control, tricky lighting
situations, etc. with a modern camera as with an older model. If you
don't know the basics you won't be able to use all these new tools and
you are not going to learn how to use them on a camera that doesn't have
them. I don't find my 1920 Kodak No. 2 Autograph any harder or easier to
use than my modern slr just slower. Modern cameras may simplify our
control over the image but they only make decisions based on our input.
To use these highly sophisticated tools to their full potential ones
needs to learn the finer points of photography and what better way to
learn it than on the camera they are going to use. The same goons that
set a modern camera to fully automatic because they don't know any
better twenty years ago wouldn't have known anymore, they would have
just moved the dials until the needle lined up. Photography is not
rocket science, the basics are very easy to learn then it is a matter of
experimenting and finding what works.
Alan
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In a message dated 2/14/2004 8:23:12 PM Pacific Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Believe what you like, but the majority of the
"photographers" that I know wouldn't know how to set an
exposure without some sort of automation is their life
depended on it.
If you give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day.
The automatic camera is the fish that you can filet daily.
William Robb
I am actually finding my fully automated Canon harder to use than my
previously manually oriented (but fully automated) ZX-5n. All the buttons, all the
options!!! Confusing.
So I usually put it into manual. Which is a bit tougher to do on the Elan,
too, but I it anyway. That way, at least I know, sort of, what is going on.
So, IMHO (in my humble opinion), it's better to learn on a totally manual
camera (which for me was the K-1000). I can't imagine learning on one of these
automated marvels (while not in manual mode), how would one learn anything?
Well, one could learn composition, but not much more. Okay, one could learn the
ways different types of film react to different situations. And to remember to
take the lens cap off, and maybe a few other things...
Marnie aka Doe :-) Actually, forget it, I am not really that humble.
