At 06:17 12/3/01, John Robinson wrote:
John your a genuine photographic curmudgeon!
I had an excellent role model:
My father used a highly advanced neural network exposure program with his
Argus C-3 "brick" outdoors. He would look at the sky and the subject, then
set the shutter speed and f-stop about a second later. I still peruse his
archive of K-25 and K-64 spanning 30 years with utter amazement. His yield
of perfect exposure with one of the most unforgiving films made was over
95%. Indoors, he used 25B flash bulbs and could work out lens aperture
from the distance using their GN in a fraction of a second. He would focus
through the RF, look at the top of the lens for the distance and
immediately set the aperture. 25B's in a bowl reflector had a GN at least
that of a Metz 60-series running at full output. Speed winding was done by
holding the camera in one hand and the winder knob with the other. Two
very quick twists of both wrists got to the next frame as fast as a
single-stroke lever winder. All this is very nearly a "lost art" [sigh]
and it's one of the reasons I bought the Contax IIIa. Some day, with
enough practice, I'll eventually be as good at it as he was, and the "art"
will live on a while longer.
When he finally bought a Can*n AE-1 during the early 1980's, he tested its
TTL metering system thoroughly with two rolls of K-64 to ensure it was as
accurate as he was. Those two rolls of slides are the only ones with notes
on their mounts about f-stop and shutter speed. It took me a while to
realize what he had done (and why). I figured it out when the date on the
slide mounts finally connected with when he purchased the AE-1. Even then,
I still don't think he completely trusted the AE-1 metering. Why did he
use a lowly C-3 "Bakelite brick" for over 25 years? It did everything he
needed a camera to do; he never felt constrained by it. My father was
undecided about whether to replace it with an SLR for several years, and
then spent months doing research before buying one. The question always
boiled down to what he would be able to do with an SLR that he could not do
with his C-3. The answer was always "nothing." The AE-1 purchase was an
extravagant self-indulgence.
USF = Ultra-Silent Fingers
Even Can*n, with all their technological wizardry, hasn't come up with an
AF drive that silent (assuming there's no grit in the lens helical from
sandblasting it during cleaning).
-- John
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