The Real Problem with View Camera Magazine

[Hans Berkhout]

With professional editor, lay-out and graphic design etc would you be willing to pay the inherently higher price? Did you know that Photo Techniques magazine is on it's third editor since Mike Johnston left? 3 invisible (irreadable) editors, none of them ever wrote any editorial column, no communication with the readership. A ship without a captain, no sense of direction. With Steve Simmons at least we have a publisher/editor who is easily aproachable and clearly doing his best, and he happens to be a photographer as well. So what if he promotes things that he feels atrongly about (books by friends, workshops etc). Joni Mitchell is right: "you don't know what you've got" etc

[David Mark]

I agree with Paul Kierstead. One of the things I most prize about this forum is the civility of its participants. When we disagree with one another we generally manage to do it without rancor or personal attacks.

I agree that criticism of View Camera magazine is appropriate in this forum. But by exercising a modicum of the editorial judgment Rory advocates for Steve Simmons, he could have written a post that plainly set out his criticisms without being offensive. Why could Rory not have said something like 'The magazine is often badly written,' and then given a few choice examples from the text? Instead we get, for example: "The problem is that the narrative portion of each of these articles has no apparent function other than to bridge various quotes, themselves of little insight. The writing of these introductions is at high school level, and would not recieve a grade higher than C from a generous teacher." Without an example of what he is complaining about, all I get from this is that Rory thinks the articles are badly written. That he could have said more concisely and without the gratuitous and insulting nonsense about what grade these pieces might have received in high school. Rory, I am criticizing your post. Would you find my criticism improved in any way if I said that your post was sophomoric and pretensious, and would not have received a grade above a C+ in a college freshman composition class? I hope your reaction is 'no; if you are going to criticize be specific about what you say is wrong.'

And then we have this: "I was stunned at a two-page "review" by Ellis Vener on a Sekonic light meter. Mr. Vener's article is not a review. It is a two-page description of features. And what is on the back page of the magazine? A full page advertisement for the meter that Mr. Vener spent two pages describing. From the point of view of a reader, the obvious conclusion is that Mr. Vener is now in the business of writing what is commonly known as a puff piece." First, I doubt that Rory was actually stunned. This is just more of the rhetorical excess that abounds in this post. Second, why is it not useful for Mr. Vener to spend two pages describing the features of this complicated meter? Third, does Rory have any information that anything Mr. Vener wrote is incorrect? If so, I eagerly await Rory's hard-hitting expose of Sekonic ("Sekonic's dirty secret: meters calibrated by trained gerbils!!!"). Just because Sekonic advertises in View Camera, it does not follow that they have bought out the editorial staff -- or that they would need to in order to sell their (as far as I know) fine products.

As to Rory's main point that View Camera magazine is badly written: Personally, I do not find myself 'cringing with embarrassment' over the quality of the writing. I do not read View Camera for the quality of the prose. I read it to see new work and to get new information. These things it has in abundance. Keep up the good work, Steve.

David Mark

[Sammy_4293]

"Just because Sekonic advertises in View Camera, it does not follow that they have bought out the editorial staff -- or that they would need to in order to sell their (as far as I know) fine products."

Mr. Mark,

How do you know?

[John Boeckeler]

The word is pretentious, not pretensious.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Second, why is it not useful for Mr. Vener to spend two pages describing the features of this complicated meter?



Because it is not that complicated and it comes with an instruction booklet. 5 years ago I bought the L308, the predecessor to all of these new kind of dual meters, the first thing I did was sit down and spend 20 minutes reading the manual. After that, from the first time I used it, it was very straight forward an easy to use.



I dont know if this review was done to praise Sekonic or not, but in any case spending 2 pages on a magazine repeating what is explained in the instruction manual seems, to me, an exercise in futility.

[steve simmons]

Second, why is it not useful for Mr. Vener to spend two pages describing the features of this complicated meter?

Because it is not that complicated and it comes with an instruction booklet. 5 years ago I bought the L308, the predecessor to all of these new kind of dual meters, the first thing I did was sit down and spend 20 minutes reading the manual. After that, from the first time I used it, it was very straight forward an easy to use.

I dont know if this review was done to praise Sekonic or not, but in any case spending 2 pages on a magazine repeating what is explained in the instruction manual seems, to me, an exercise in futility.



--Jorge, 2004-05-30 19:32:10 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dear Jorge

Not everyone has the same meter you own and not everyone has read the instruction book. Don't be so solipsistic. This is also a new meter with new features.One of our jobs in the magazine is to cover new equipment. Are you going to take offense when we do an article abuot the new Cooke convertible lens. Are you going to charge us with selling editorial space if they take out an ad?

If you do be prepared to prove it or be prepared to make an apology

steve simmons

[David Mark]

Sammy: I believe you have missed my point. I have not claimed to know anything about the degree of coziness that exists between View Camera and Sekonic. I claim only that an inappropriate relationship cannot be inferred merely from the fact that Sekonic is an advertiser and that a product of theirs has been favorably reviewed. It may be, for example, that the products are favorably reviewed because they are good products.

Mr. Boeckeler: Thank you for correcting my spelling. In the future I will ptoofread with more care.

Jorge: I may be missing something here, but ordinarily to get the instruction booklet you have to buy the product. I read reviews in order to decide if I want to buy the product. A review that summarized the several functions of a multi-function meter would be helpful to me in deciding whether I wanted to replace my current meter.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I may be missing something here, but ordinarily to get the instruction booklet you have to buy the product



Not necessarily David, when I bought mine I went to the camera store, asked them to let me see one and asked them to let me see the instructions booklet. In the store I played with it and read the manual a little bit, once I was satisfied I liked the meter I bought it at the store. This is a far better approach than trusting someone else's opinion. Ellis is a very good photographer and I am sure he did a very good job in the article, all I am saying is that IMO perhaps using those two pages to complete another article would have been better use of the space.



BTW it is proofread, not ptoofread....(could not resist the little dig David:-))



Are you going to charge us with selling editorial space if they take out an ad?



If you do be prepared to prove it or be prepared to make an apology



Funny, I remember about 4 years ago you did a review on the L308 because in your workshops your students said it was "too hard to use," you then went through all the functions of the meter but failed to mentions its biggest "problem", which was that it was calibrated to a 12% gray standard instead of an 18% when used in the spot mode (the meter is now discontinued), resulting in underexposure for many people who used it.



I have not seen the new L358, but how different can it be? How many more features can it have that make it sooooo much more difficult to use?....a meter is a meter, for crying out loud!
You asked in another thread which articles to remove to make more space, well there you go, this one would have been a ripe candidate. Once again please pay attention to who said what, I did not accuse you of selling out editorial space to advertisers, and I sure as hell do not owe you an apology.



In the end, I was responding to David's question. As I said before, this issue has been rehashed in so many places in so many ways that perhaps a better use of your time would be spending it in your magazine not fighting with people on these forums. There are as many opinions as belly buttons and coming here to "defend" your magazine and trying to force people to agree with you is nothing more than flailing at windmills and puts people off. People who might otherwise subscribe to your magazine.

[steve simmons]

Pease get your facts sraight before coming on here to make posts that are full of errors.

Not everyone lives near a store big enough to carry these meters in stock.

The meter I wote about was the L608, not the 308(is there such a meter?). I did an article on Zoning with the Multi-Tasking Meter. and used the 608 as n example.

I will continue to correct mis-information that you and a few others seem prone to post.

steve simmns

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Ok, my mistake, it is the 608. Is this the "full of errors" you are refferring?

Get over it!