I never bothered with a pencil, Shel. Notes and files are so easy to
screw up. I have eidetic recall of almost every photo I've ever
taken. I can usually just look at a photo, taken even 30+ years ago,
and remember the camera, the lens, and usually the film and exposure
data. Writing it all down seemed like such a waste of time, and I was
never good at keeping things on paper filed. Paper notes are
ephemeral to me.
Having image data information embedded in the exposure proves to be
very useful, a nice time-savings to be able to pull the data out and
use it to find, sort and collate. For instance, a question on the
quality of a lens wide open came up recently ... I polled my database
of 6000 images taken with that lens and extracted all the image files
taken wide open as well as one and two stops down. That gave me a
clear picture of what the lens' behavior really was. It's very hard
to do that with pencilled notes or even eidetic recall ... they're
too slow and cumbersome to be worth the effort.
This might not improve our photographic vision or our technical
expertise, but it can make us better photographers in other ways.
Godfrey
On Jul 26, 2005, at 9:08 AM, Shel Belinkoff wrote:
Many years ago, in a far away and long forgotten land, there was a
simple
device that helped the people remember things like exposure
parameters. It
was called a pencil. A photographer would often carry one, and
would write
down the details on a page of a small notebook. These notes could be
referenced at any time.
Shel
[Original Message]
From: E.R.N. Reed
Shooting digital also gives you actual data to examine, to see what
worked and what didn't.
I'm not saying this has actually helped me but it does provide an
extra
tool with potential.
