On 4/1/2010 12:15 PM, William Robb wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Sessoms"
Subject: Re: A Crazy Idea
And that's been my point all along. The photographer is more
important than the equipment. Equipment is important, but not as
important as the photographer. Equipment is only as good as the
photographer who uses it.
A poor photographer is still a poor photographer no matter how much
he spends on gear. Expensive equipment merely gives the poor
photographer the means to create high resolution lousy images.
Or, to be more accurate, better technical quality images that are
wanting in terms of composition.
Really John, do you think that an Adams could have churned out his
esthetically stunning landscapes from the American southwest with a
pocket 110 camera?
Please don't say yes, I will have to mock you if you do.
I don't think it would have mattered how good a darkroom technician he
was, there would still have been a little something missing.
This is an extreme example, but sometimes one needs to use absurd
examples to make succint points.
You (and a few others it seems) are pretending that it is an either/
or issue; that a photographer is either an expert or a hack. There are
a lot of photographers who are good enough to benefit from better
equipement that fit into neither of the categories that you
presuppose, and whose pictures do improve with better equipment, be it
something with more resolution, or better noise control, or faster and
more responsive performance.
Look at Dave Savage's night photography and how much better it got
when he went to the D700 as an example.
Carry this forward a bit, I use a K7. A friend of mine uses a D3.
I can do things with his camera that are simply beyond what I can do
with my Pentax.
Does this make me a bad photographer? Perhaps, perhaps not, but the
better equipment definitely does allow me to do things that are beyond
my capabilities with my K7.
William Robb
No Ansel wouldn't have been able to produce the work he's known for
using a 110 camera. On the other hand, I'll bet he'd have wrung the
most anyone could have out of the format. The lenses he used weren't
even the sharpest available, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941 was
shot with a Cooke triple Convertible. .Now I'm no expert on large
format lenses, and a lot of people, (mostly those trying to unload one
on sale it seems), have said nice things about them, but such a design
must have some comprises in quality. Especially considerng it's a
1890's design. Yet Adams made the most of it. A really good
photographer will do that, play to the streangths of their equipment,
and avoid it's weaknesses.
--
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\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 I've just upgraded to Thunderbird 3.0 and the
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