Why would somebody today use camera equipment that is in part 70+ years old? especially when that somebody has, until recently been a complete slave of the modern DSLR and its uber automation.
Obviously that somebody is me…
My first real cameras, a Pentax MX in the 1980′s (sadly gone to be with jesus) followed by a Nikon FM2/n in 1996 (still going strong) were completely manual – ok they metered, but the battery would last for several years since metering was all they did. Both would work without the battery. However, and it is a big however, I never used them without the meter, ie on manual mode. Â I also have an autofocussing Nikon F4s with arguably one of the finest matrix meters from that era (late 1980s) and still going strong. I use autofocus with it all the time and tend to leave it on matrix metering unless I need to spot meter. Once again, I never use the manual mode except occasionally. My DSLRs are absolutely never used in manual mode and I take advantage of every bit of automation available.
It has something to do with both ‘what I use them for’ and ‘because I can’. Photojournalism with the DSLRs is easier, fewer opportunities are missed, and the results are consistently good. However, from the 1980′s with the manual  focusing (MF) MX I did learn a great deal about exposure and the diciplines of choosing the right shutter speed/aperture combo to get the right kind of shot. I missed loads, but I did understand how the camera worked and made it work for me in most instances, albeit slowly.
But even then the siren song of automation was very alluring. All of my photographer friends were getting Canon AE-1s with aperture priority and they couldn’t understand why I used such a ‘clunker’. And to be honest, the only reason I continued was that I couldn’t afford the Canon.
When I was using the FM2/n more seriously, the serious photographers and pros were using F4s and F5s and possibly the FM2/n as a backup. I’m afraid I lusted unhealthily for one of the technological marvels and resented my FM2/n. What I didn’t realise then was that with any automated camera, the camera doesn’t necessarily make the correct exposure choices, especially with ‘difficult’ situations. I also didn’t realise that I compensated for these difficult situations as a matter of course having learned about exposure on the MX. All of my friends’ cameras averaged the light on the scene and sometimes exposed ‘wrongly’ (backlit, snow etc etc) and they hadn’t a clue why, since they weren’t compensating for the misleading exposure values. I learned that cameras could be wrong by using a raft of cheap point & shoots through the 1990s and the disappointments were many. Well composed shots but the exposures were f*cked due to the camera thinking it knew best. I just thought I was a crap photographer and got very discouraged. I still didn’t realise the camera was wrong, not me.
Then came the FM2/n. I don’t know why I chose the manual camera. I could have got the F90 or whatever the less expensive AF camera-de-jour was then, but I knew I was comfortable with manual. I also began to seriously look into technique and it dawned on me that the FM2/n was not a bad choice. Also, the guy at the camera shop was really enthused by my interest in MF and took an interest himself in my progress. So I learned a lot. It helped that at the turn of the century I could pick up used quality MF lenses and gear really cheap as people jumped ship to digital and AF. Happy days, and I have to admit to being less than pure in heart when it comes to gear  - I lurve quality gear! I still have most of that gear (and use it) and recently sold a well used (ie well battered) AIS 300mm Nikkor f/4 on ebay for considerably more than I paid for it, even counting for inflation… curious how it goes round.
Then I too embraced digital. It was actually because digital photography and web went together soooo well. It is so convenient to source your own artwork (assuming the skills) to use in web development (ditto assuming the skills). There is a creative karma there that is whatever the opposite of recursive is, and I love it and embrace it. I think it is supremely exciting to be living through the communications revolution that the democratisation of photography through digital technology has brought about. I’ll wax more about that in another post but I’m nailing my colours to the mast early on that one.
So, back to the beginning.
I do believe it is automatic for the people. I am a technologist. I work in a medium that changes almost beyond recognition each year (or month, or day, depending on your speed of acceptance) and I embrace that too. However… obsolescence should be redefined in marketing terms. Because although it is guaranteed with tech advances, consumer functionality is still there in the ‘old’ models but tech goods become a commodity where the ‘latest’ is desirable and heavily marketed as such to a (generally) non-tech consuming public*. In camera terms, most people equate more megapixels with better, but how to explain (simplistically speaking) that  fitting an increasing number of them them all onto the same small sensor size doesn’t necessarily increase image quality – the reverse in fact. Sounds good though…
And I have gone back to the beginning. I have a 52 year old Leica IIf, with lenses from 1936, 1949 and 1955 and I am developing my own films. These cameras have no metering, complex film loading, squinty little viewfinders and an even squintier focussing device called a rangefinder. I’m loving it too, and will talk about exactly why I love it, and its sister, the Leica If (without even a rangefinder) in some length in future posts. I will continue to use my Nikon D300 and fast f/2.8 glass when I need to (I have an assignment in a day or two when I must use it) but for the last few weeks I’ve neen using nothing else except for the Leicas. And I have (re)learnt more about photography in these past few weeks than I have in the last few years, and I have regained a connection to the past, a kind of mainline to where modern photography and photographers have come from. I use the word ‘mainline’ deliberately, it is like a drug and as usual I want as much of it as possible…
Enuf already!
* We’ll see how the current financial situation screws these fuckers (see Thom Hogan)
by skinnyvoice
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