learning from photos on line????

[Greg Miller]

However, there's no need at all to master, or even minimally understand technical things to take great photos. There are tons of wonderful pictures on Flickr by people who I think only know which button to push. Cartier-Bresson could possibly be an example, or look at Allen Ginsberg's book, for that matter. There is, though, no possibility of taking great pictures if you don't know how to do the art stuff.

Agreed. But mastering the technical side will increase the odds of making a great photo. Those who do not understand need to be lucky to end up with a great photo (where the automated decisions, or random selections of the technical aspects, just happen to work).

But my point is more about those actually thinking about the techncial aspects of the photograph. Once they get absorbed into thinking about the technical aspects, the left brain dominates, and the creative right brain becomes submissive - the result being the artistry suffers. For those people, only after the technical aspects become intuitive and second nature does the creative right brain become able to flourish.

[stradibarrius]

Do you think you can gather any information on lens performance???

[mdarnton]

I'm not sure you can even get that from an 8x10 photographic silver print, except in extreme cases.