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[OM] Re: olympus-digest V2 #3813

Subject: [OM] Re: olympus-digest V2 #3813
From: Mark_Jennings@xxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 07:31:49 -0500
Last year I took a basic photo course (three nights) at a local gallery
with a friend who had just received a new Minolta 4 as a present.  She knew
nothing about photography but was eager to learn it and get familiar with
her new camera.  On the first night of the class, the instructor placed
before us his Nikon F5 and F100 bodies and a variety of very expensive
lenses and proceeded to tell everyone that if you want to take photography
seriously, you need serious equipment like his.  The people in the class
had brought their cameras with them, some with new cameras just received
for Christmas, and others with old manual gear they had received as
hand-me-downs.  It was a very mixed bag of gear.  Besides myself, one other
student out of about eight had an OM camera.  Most did not know how to use
their cameras and were attending the class in order to learn.  The
instructor spent the evening explaining the capabilities of his wonderbrick
system to students who had no idea of what he was talking about.  It was
discouraging for many of them.

As I had worked for a time in a camera store in the late 70s and early 80s,
I was at least a little familiar with most of the gear I saw there and
during the breaks, I was able to explain to some of the people the basic
functions of their cameras.  Thats all they really wanted to know at that
stage, how to operate their cameras and the steps involved in making an
exposure.  I had fun doing that.

The next day, I called the gallery to politely express my opinion about the
class and the instruction.  They told me they had received another call
similar to mine and would look into the matter.  We did not attend the
remaining classes.  But I have been back to the gallery since then and have
noted that they have a new instructor for their basic photo course.
Hopefully someone who wants to share the enjoyment of photography rather
than just trying to impress people with their gear.

Mark Jennings

Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 06:12:01 -0800
From: "William Sommerwerck" <williams@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [OM] Olympus vs. L**c*

Your instructor could start by getting his facts straight.

Leitz did not "invent" 35mm photography. Cameras using scraps of movie film
had been around since the end of the 19th century. Leitz's contribution was
introducing the double-frame format (what we would call "full-frame") and
putting a high-quality lens on these cameras.

I'd like to amplify the comments of others that anyone teaching a
photography course should NOT start out by telling his students that one
particular brand of camera is categorically superior to all others. You can
take great pictures with a pinhole camera made from an oatmeal box and
lousy
pictures with a Linhof Technika. To paraphrase the joke about auto safety,
it's "the nut holding the camera" that makes the difference. And you can
tell him I said so.

PS: I'd love to own a Leica M6, if only because it's such a beautifully
engineered "object." But I don't know what I'd do with it! I much prefer
SLRs, and my OM-4T body and motor drive are so expensive that I rarely take
_them_ out of the house.





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