On 12/5/04, BILL ROBB, discombobulated, offered: >> >It's a replacement for a particular skill. >> >All that features do, is allow the photographer to get by with >less >> >developed skills. > >> >> That is an opinion and not fact. >> > >Really? >Ok, lets look at a few skills. >Looking at a scene and knowing what the aperture and shutter speed >needs to be set at. >It can be done without a light meter, if you have developed that >skill. >Setting aperture and shutter speed efficiently can be done, if you >have practiced it enough. >Most don't, they have built in light meters, and use some form of >exposure automation. >Most haven't bothered to develop the skill set required to operate a >camera quckly, manually. >If speed is thought to be of the essence, they shoot on auto. >Focusing can be done manually, and very quickly, provided you know >your equipment, and have worked at developing the skill.. >Perhaps not fast enough to follow focus a race care going 350km/hr, >but certainly fast enough for most requirements, such as following a >bride down the aisle. >Few people have refined that skill anymore, they use autofocus. > >These are skills which, once aquired, will get lost if not used. I >can no longer operate a camera manually as fast as I would like to. I >have fallen into the auto exposure trap myself, and am finding now >that I am losing the ability to focus as quickly as well, now that I >have aquired and am using more AF technology. >I haven't been able to acurately determine exposure without a light >meter for a very, very long time, though I was able to estimate >within a half stop at one point in my life. >I do know of what I speak, and from my own experience, I have found >what I said to be fact, not opinion.
I don't disagree with any of the above. What I would point out is that in your original assertion that 'All that features do, is allow the photographer to get by with less developed skills' is an opinion and not a fact. It can't be fact - because it doesn't apply to me! I have a camera with features, and I choose not to use those features most of the time. Like AF - I very seldom use it, but if I do, it's not because I have less developed skills. My manual focussing skills are satisfactory. I know which way to turn the lens barrel, even on different makes of lens where they operate in differing directions. Image Stabilisation is a 'feature', and one that I would dearly love to have, and in fact will, shortly. It will help me achieve something that is rarely possible without. Take the barn owl, for instance - at the moment he (or she) pops around at dusk, when light levels are low. using an effective max aperture of f4, in order to avoid camera shake at 450mm, it is pretty dire unless shooting at 800 or even 1600. The problem here is the digital noise. I want to shoot at 400, or even 200 to get the pics looking as clean as possible. A tripod is completely out of the question. The bird moves too fast for that. It has to be handheld. Short of setting up a few dozen flash heads around the field (hmmm, could be fun...), I see no way of doing it the way I would like to without IS. So - I buy an IS lens and use that. Does this mean that I am now getting by with less developed skills? I think that it is entirely possible for IS or AF or even AE to allow a photographer to get by with less developed skills, and I think it happens a lot. But your assertion that 'All that features do, is allow the photographer to get by with less developed skills' is an opinion because there are many instances of photographers with totally developed skills using 'features'. Trying not to be pedantic, but standing up to blanket statements! Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=====| www.macads.co.uk/snaps _____________________________
