RF and SLR: Taking vs Making Pictures

[canonetc]

An interesting article by Bill Pierce from the Digital Journalist on RF's, with notes on the Leica compared to SLR shooting. An argument? Not sure....

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0702/pierce.html

Cheers,

Chris
canonetc

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

A very thin piece with nothing much to say. It wanders between RF and SLR and digital without ever going anywhere.

And I always make (not take) photos with any camera.

 

[rxmd]

An argument? Not sure....

I'd say no. His whole taking vs. making pictures is wordplay and semantics IMHO (even more so from a linguistics point of view, because SLR shooters also refer to what they're doing as "taking" pictures).

Nobody denies that SLRs and RFs provide a different user interface, so to speak, but IMHO the difference is overrated when someone tries to frame this by using different verbs for using different types of cameras. What about cameras that have both? What about TLRs? Not really.

Philipp

 

[M4streetshooter]

I used to read Bill's stuff starting in the early 70's...but it seems to me that he's running on empty and completely bored..../...boring

 

[Robert Price]

I felt like I was watching a Charlie Brown Show, You know with the teacher... "WA WA, WAH WAH , WA WA WA WA"

I realy am so tired of any one, and every one extoling the virtues of different types of cameras. It has gotten to the point of being rediculas. <(SP)

Who really cares any way? I know I don't, hell I like all cameras. I know that they all differs from one another. And Bill blathering on about being a photog, so frickin what. It's not like you have special powers or something, like Bill has mastered some secrete art or photography. All bull hocky.

There I'm done sorry for the rant.

 

[RML]

Well, I think he has a point. You can only make photos with an RF camera, 50mm lens and on film. Anything else is just thievery of images. 😛

 

[mike goldberg]

I also read Bill Pierce a lot in the old days... not any more.

Making or taking a picture has to do with the photographer.
Is he snap shooting? Or, is he composing, so to speak on film,
with attention to foreground/background and proper
exposure, etc.? You can make a picture with a $70- RF found
on eBay, or an M6.

What really matters is what is in the eye, mind, heart and intent
of the photographer.
Cheers, mike

 

[aizan]

A hearty welcome to the new kid on the digital block, the long base length rangefinder.

guess he wasn't keen on the r-d1. not one mention.

 

[ray_g]

:bang: I wouldn't badmouth Bill Pierce. RFF might get sued.

 

[tkluck]

No Pulitzer prize here, but I thought it was an interesting column as columnist writings go. I got the point. I'm not going to dust off my calligraphy gear and make a copy suitable for framing.

Reading a column is like eating a tortilla. I'm not hungry anymore, and I didn't get heartburn. Thats all you get from the 99 cent menu.

Writing a regular column is bloody hard. Perhaps the guy is a better photographer than he is a writer?

 

[sf]

I'll tell you what: I prefer to take a picture (capture a moment) than to create a picture (pose and light). I don't like producing an artificial image. I prefer to capture a unique image. When I shoot portraits, it's the same way. I never pose my models. I just follow them around with the camera. When I shoot on the street, I just walk slowly with my eyes open enough to miss as little as possible.


You neither take nor make an image with any type of camera more or less than with another.

 

[jlw]

:bang: I wouldn't badmouth Bill Pierce. RFF might get sued.

Not likely. Thank God for "Cherry vs. Des Moines Leader et al"!!

 

[jlw]

Reading a column is like eating a tortilla. I'm not hungry anymore, and I didn't get heartburn. That's all you get from the 99 cent menu.

Bravo! I hereby nominate the above for RFF's pithiest comment of the year. As journalism quotes go, this one is worthy of the famously acerbic A. J. Liebling.

I'm not even going to bother reading the Pierce column, since the brilliance of tkluck's throwaway aphorism is bound to make anything Pierce might have written pale by contrast.