mardi 7 décembre 2004

Fuzzy Logic Too many camera controls... difficult to see My eyesight, like many other people's, started to deteriorate slightly when I was forty. Twenty years on at the age of sixty I'm in trouble having to use spectacles for all near work such as reading, writing, computer time-wasting... and setting the controls on cameras. I start my day at 5:30 am on average (earlier in the summer months when it's lighter) and have to use specs with a +2 power in order to read anything properly. By 10 am when I've returned from my morning coffee in the local bar I can change to my new specs which are only +1 power. I don't know whether it's the light at this time of day or the coffee that give my eyes better focusing strength but I certainly feel more comfortable knowing that I can function at less rather than greater diopter power as the hours pass. After our evening meal, however, I have to revert to the +2 pair in order to see these words on my Mac's screen as I write my daily weblog. Sometimes it all goes wrong. Yesterday I was very low in spirit for a few hours... I hadn't slept for most of the night... got up very early... there was a hard frost... both fires had gone out so the house was cold. Sometimes I don't answer the 'phone for days when everything gets too much to think about just sorting out the most important problem first... and leaving aside the ones I can't do anything about. After several attempts to contact me during the morning Roger and Frances gave up and came round... Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz are very well known photographers and authors (with over 60 books and thousands of magazine articles to their credit) and they live about fifty miles west of here in the Vienne. They always make their trips worthwhile by bringing a couple of bottles of very drinkable French wine, several heavy carrier bags of English language photo magazines and at least one German or Japanese camera they are reviewing for any of a string of magazine contracts they hold from Russia to the US. Last time they called by Roger had a loaned Leica MP complete with Leicavit trigger wind and a 90mm f/4 Macro-Elmar-M with the close-up attachment. Over his other shoulder he always has his (one of two they were given) Alpa SW12 fitted with the superlative 38mm Zeiss Biogon originally of Hasselblad SWC fame. There's a limit, even to a photographer, as to how much you can take in at one sitting when a Leica MP and Alpa SW12 pop through the door at the same time... but Roger's expertise at handling such equipment and his ability to pass on very quickly and lucidly only the relevant and necessary bits of information to enable you to take photographs with any piece of equipment in under a minute speak for his understanding of both photographic apparatus and the human (my) grasp of technicalities. But, yesterday on Roger's non-Alpa SW12 shoulder was a Nikon D70 and wide-angle autofocus zoom. We've both professionally used every Nikon made in the past forty or so years so he offered me their highly successful digital version to see how impressed I would be. To cut a long story short the first few seconds have certainly made a lasting impression... ...what I saw through the viewfinder reminded me of when as a child I used to lean out of the steam train railway carriage window peering along the dark tunnel for the light at the end! I'll put my instant disappointment down to my fuzzy eyesight rather than the design and mechanics of this best-selling Nikon SLR. I was going to say that what I saw looked like the image I've chosen for today's weblog... but what I was trying to view was far worse than that. If a company such as Nikon can't provide better viewfinders (I'm sure they can design and make them) then the digital route for me is a hopeless route. I don't really have to put specs on to see what my own camera's controls are set at - well, not with manual, mechanical, meterless cameras such as my Nikon F2s or Leica M3 - but with any other piece of photographic equipment which relies on an LCD readout to provide basic and necessary information... then I'm up shit's creek without a paddle! I hope the next time Roger and Frances pop around they'll have the digital Epson Voigtlander R-D1 for me to try... that I'm sure will be the answer with it's typically bright rangefinder-viewfinder, just a few basic controls, a lever-wind, superlative lenses... and a decent screen on the back. If the price dropped a bit (or perhaps a lot) they could have a world-beater on their hands for the likes of millions like myself. On second thoughts though, I'm just the sort of oddball that few will cater for... I'll just have to increase the power of my specs now and again... or abandon photography. 9:37:15 PM    comment []