Stan Halpin wrote on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:24:47 -0700 > Jim, I read this piece last night (after W. Robb kindly pointed out how I > needed to access the site. Duh.) > > My recollection/interpretation of the key points the author was making is as > follows: > a. Close enough is good enough. Set the camera for the conditions and take > photos already. > b. Intuition is better than logic. Well, he doesn't actually say that, but > the > whole lens-design bit about how good experienced lens designers can do better > than a computer program is in that same vein. > > I agree with (a). I think we all (except Bob W. and Frank) sometimes let > ourselves be driven by a fascination with the electromechanical gee-whiziness > of our cameras, and we strive for vanishingly small degrees of precision in > aspects like exposure, color balance, focus etc., thereby losing some ability > to see, to visualize, and to create an image that we and others will care > about. Trust me; the research on cognition clearly shows that we have limited > capacity, and attending to technical details must diminish the extent to > which > we are attending to the image as image. > > I disagree with (b). Intuitive decisions are no better than logical > decisions; > see Chapter 7 in my 2009 book on developing leaders for links to relevant > research. I would agree that an experienced designer is far more likely to > generate an innovative solution than an inexperienced designer, but the tools > they use will have no bearing on the outcome. A designer who has grown up on > CAD/CAM and who is good at his job is just as likely to be good as is a > designer who grew up grinding lenses by hand using polishing cloths made from > passenger pigeon skins. Actually, the modern designer is likely to have an > edge > since he can try more iterations and hence has more trial-and-error learning > opportunities. > > My general assessment is that the author is a romantic, yearning for the good > old days when life was simple. It is unfortunate that he picks on a > particular > consumer product as the focus of his discussion, because it leads people to > talk about the goodness and badness of Leicas more than the merits of his > apparent assumption that things used to be simple and are no longer so. > > BTW, i recently had my father-in-law's M-2 refurbished, torn shutter curtain > repaired, etc. It sits here on the shelf by my desk. Every time I pick it up > I > am surprised by what a large heavy unwieldy camera it is. It may be simple, > but > it is pretty primitive. For usability I'll take a Minox EL, Olympus OM-1, > Pentax ME-Super, LX, or MZ-S any day. And of course the current generation > DSLRs provide so much more functionality than the Leicas ever had. And they > allow us to take pretty good images as long as we remember that close enough > is > good enough.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments Stan. Most of us here aren't familiar with Puts' position as THE technical guru of Leicaland. It's more than a little ironic to read his words decrying technology in favor of intuition when technology and measurement are the core of his approach to reviewing Leica lenses and camera bodies. Maybe he's getting a little grumpy with the passing years... Regards, Jim -- 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.
