Good video about cameras are not so easy to make. Not only for RF cameras. I'm giving them all one big credit to have courage to talk about it. Even Winogrand was unable to give clear explanation then he was asked why RF.
Best explanation why RF was giving by Meyerowitz so far (to me). It is so natural. It is why I'm RF and not SLR person.
https://youtu.be/Xumo7_JUeMo
And it is genius not just on RF, but what is best in photography (to me).
So after I watched this video, those guys who could barely hold it and unable to take interesting picture with it, are ... nice guys who are at least trying it. They are also doing some write ups about Leica.
Like this one.
🙂
I guess it is a mindset or early experience prejudice. I started out with cameras that only had a viewfinder, no prism or RF. Then I got a SLR. It was a camera, but interesting in that I could change lenses if I had any others, and I got on film pretty much what I saw in the viewfinder.
Then based on some magazine articles, I decided I must have a fixed lens RF. I got one. By then I did have some other lenses for my SLR, and the RF didn't reach out and grab me. Next I got a Super Press 23. Before I got it, it hadn't dawned on me it was RF. But whatever it took to get those (to me) big negatives. But it was big and heavy.
To this day I don't prefer RF over SLR, even though I use them for whatever reason strikes me to do so. I don't have time to look at the whole youtube video, but I got a lot less interested when he talked about how one can see outside the frame lines. I usually do that before I bring the camera to my eye. That comment alone made it really easy to stop watching.
Nor for me, is there usually any big difference in focusing. I have taken a lot of photos in very dim light. With SLR I learned to go in and out of focus outside the center focusing aid. Or I learned to estimate the distance and set my lens to it, or look for something else that seemed to be the same distance to focus on it. To me, in really dim areas, the RF was only helpful if there was something sufficiently bright to use at the plane I wanted to be focused on. If there wasn't, I was better off with an SLR.
That is what works for me. I had to learn that to get the photos I wanted. It worked for me. But everyone has to find there own way or miss the photo. And sometimes, no matter how I tried, I missed a photo as well.
Stephen, I know you know great camera equipment; but I realize now your also a great fisherman too.
Funny.
I don't spend much time on youtube period, or any other video source either. I either get books or as someone already mentioned, I ask here if I haven't already read it here.
But I think Stephen is simply voicing frustration at the amount of mis-information on the web, about a subject he obviously both knows a lot about, and cares a lot about. I am so surprised to see everyone jump in to defend the defenseless.
I have yet to see of those who have done so have their own videos.
😛 😀
