Spider67
Well-known
"I'll show you an old SLR I have at home" and what did he bring? One of those plastic Canons ...YUKKKK!!!
Alex v T said:clintock said:My gripe is lens speed, and zooms as 'normal'. What happened to consumer cameras and fast lenses?
I totally agree that this is the major culprit.
For example, amateur photography to a major turn for the worse with the introduction of small aperture zoom point and shoot 35mm cameras.
There are shots where the wide aperture is almost mandatory, and there are shots where you want to stop down. The 35mm format with wide aperture lenses is a very flexible compromise. It is just right.
I have seen a huge number of wonderful looking snapshots (pro-like) that were created between the 30's and 60's (some in 70's). There have been much less since. This would be with both rangefinders and SLR's.
Definetely the case. It's not so much about the cameras itself, but the use of them. the 'trained' amateur up untill the end of the 70's had slow film, fast lenses (compared to the 4.5-5.6 zooms of nowadays Kit lenses) and when he was shooting the kids with granny the oof was great because he had to use a large aperture. so I'd say: Fast film. That's when everything went wrong😉
But seriuosly, I find it rather sad that our photo-albums will look rather boring compared to the ones when I was a kid (70's), or the ones of my mom and my grandparents... despite (or because) the evolotion of consumer products.
Things didn't go wrong. Everything is great.
I'm bidding on a 6x6 folder from the fifties, I hope I get it. It took me a long time (too long) to realize that I took/take better pictures (at least ones that satisfied me) with my Leica IIIf and my Pentax Spotmatic. So I decided: use them.