P3D Re: manual cameras and Realist

[Sam Smith <3dhacker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>I believe professional photographers may have a harder time reverting to an
>all-manual camera, since they have so many habits that must be re-learned.
>These old habits are likely based on auto-exposure, auto-wind, auto-focus,
>auto-bracket--tools to which almost every professional photog becomes
>accustomed.


Hmmm, I would have said the exact opposite. The Pros I know use Hasselblad
500 C/Ms, RB 67s, view cameras and Leicas. Most medium format equipment is
fully manual, and it's the amatuer market that is mostly auto-everything.

>Upon first meeting a Realist, the first thing you will notice is its sheer
>weight.

Boy, if you think a Realist is heavy, you should try my 2 1/4 Stereo Pro!
Weight of a camera has never deterred me from using it, but size has often
made me leave better stereo cameras behind.

>I'm a huge fan of 50's era mechanical design.  While many items from the
>'50s are exquisitely devised, it appears that the designers of the Realist
>had never before seen a camera.  The shutter release is on the wrong side.
>It winds backward.  The focusing mechanism is totally, er, unique.  There's
>a rather long list of peculiarities.  Every phase of the picture taking
process is hampered by some odd additional step or engineering quirk.

Being left-handed myself, this was a great relief to have a designer make a
camera for me!

It seems you have been brought up on a different mode of photography than
me. I started out  with fully manual cameras so have no problem using them.
Today it seems bells and whistles are more important to picture taking than
understanding exactly what they do.

In contrast, have you ever given anyone anyone who has had experience with
older cameras a Canon EOS ? I guarantee if you just hand them a camera with
no dials, weird sybols and abbreiviations, they will need just as much
tutoring as a first-time Realist user would. It's all relative.

Any camera to the unfamilair will take time to use correctly. As for the
lack of impressive results,was your Realist serviced before you started
using it?



Sam Smith
3dhacker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.cadvision.com/3dhacker/index.htm


------------------------------