On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Jim King <jamesk8...@mac.com> wrote: > This blog post by Erwin Puts rang a few bells for me, and I suspect it will > for some of you as well: > > http://www.imx.nl/photo/page152/page152.html > > Puts is a Leica guy but they used to say that Pentax is the Japanese Leica...
LOL ... I have never heard Pentax referred to as the "Japanese Leica". Leica is most reknowned for its lenses and rangefinder cameras and Pentax—the name itself was derived from the pentaprism used in SLRs. Erwin Puts ... Well, his article would be a heck of a lot more readable and sensible if he learned how to use paragraphs to structure his thoughts. He rambles. I'm in the middle of re-reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" right now. I read it first in '76 or so, again about '81, and with all the water under the bridge since, reading it now points out some very interesting fallacies in the logic presented as Phaedrus' hunt for the 'ghost of rationality'. Some fundamental premises seem just plain wrong to me now. But, achingly clawing my way through this mass of text, I do agree with Puts' fundamental premise, although the words he uses are strangely construed. In the modern world of equipment über alles, too much weight is lent to numbers without a shred of intelligible discourse given to the why of their primacy. Everything is opinion, belief and a faith-healer's trust that "numbers don't lie." Well, the numbers are just numbers: they're evidence, not truth. Interpreting the numbers is where art and understanding lies. Just like we can confuse ourselves and think we are increasing our understanding when we banter on about how photosites work, photon counting, etc, the truth is that very little of this has much to do with photography and a lot to do with technology and engineering. Being able to stand back from the technology, see how the equipment behaves and then bending it to our purpose of producing photographs, not theorizing about the engineering of better equipment, is often lost. Equipment cannot make photographs. Only people can. People with eyes, sensitivity, and skill to know how to work the equipment. Truly ..."equipment often gets in the way of Photography." -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
