View Camera Magazine, a call for peace

[mark blackman]

I must admit, I hadn't realised anyone was at war with View Camera Magazine. Sure, there were a few pedants on here whinging about minor mistakes in the text, but no one was forcing them to buy it.

[Brian Ellis]

I think this message falls into the category of a solution in search of a problem. There haven't been any flames of VC or its editor here in quite a while and many of the those in the past originated with requests by the editor for suggestions. Just drop the subject please, a little quiet would solve the so-called problem far more effectively than your proclamation will.

[Ed Workman]

I just with Mr. Simmons, that criminal bastard, would return my prints from 10 years ago, or at least give me some reason he won't.

[Don Wallace]

I buy VC every month. As with ANY other publication, some months are better than others. I have sent Steve Simmons friendly critiques in the past. I think it is great that he is part of this forum. When I was first getting started in Large Format, I sent him quite a few personal emails and he was always very helpful and enthusiastic. He is one of us.

If you don't like it, don't buy it, as several here have stated. It is just about that simple. Just don't get all bloody pious and self-righteous about it.

[Capocheny]

Have to agree with Ralph and Brian...

This thread is akin to saying, "Don't distinguish me from anyone else in the crowd but I'm the one with the lime green suit, huge pink eye glasses, and large bulbous nose pulling the big ole' white elephant!"

Personally, I buy mine off the news stand when it comes out.

My money - my choice!

If I don't like it... then, I certainly don't have to buy it.

That's called the freedom of choice.

You, too, can exercise that choice by deciding with your hard-earned dollars!

Cheers

[Mark_3632]

I have a difficult time figuring out what service VC provides. Forums like this are probably much more responsible for getting folks into LF than VC magazine. I have voted with my wallet and would not miss it if it went.

[Charles Hohenstein]

I don't see why there is a need for peace where there is no war. The vast majority of criticisms of View Camera have been constructive--such as the criticisms about the poor quality of proofreading. There may be a few people who have it in for Steve personally, but I'm not one of them, and I don't think most of the criticisms have constituted personal attacks.

View Camera is our only large format magazine. It is only natural that large format photographers are going to have opinions about it, and desire the quality of the magazine to be as high as possible. I don't think it is asking anything inhuman of the View Camera staff to use a spelling checker and proofread more carefully. And I don't see any reason why the magazine shouldn't be discussed in this forum. What could be more pertinent to this web site than our only large format photography magazine?

In my own comments about View Camera I have always been careful to include my appreciation for the content of the magazine. I think that the issue I received yesterday is superb. All the articles were of personal interest to me, which is quite an accomplishment. And, furthermore, I think that Steve is to be commended for printing a scanner article which distinguishes between claimed resolution and dmax figures and the actual results as tested. Most photography magazines wouldn't dare to do that. Their equipment articles read like advertising copy from the manufacturers. Bravo Steve.

But if I see problems, I am going to continue to point them out. Steve has several times solicited suggestions for the magazine. I have never seen him claim that he is immune from constructive criticism.

In this latest issue, I really like the new sans serif type face on the cover and elsewhere in the magazine--at least, I believe that it is new. Or maybe it is just that Steve has stopped using bold for the smaller type. I do think that small caps, with large caps at the beginning of words, would look better than all caps. And it struck me as peculiar that Voigtländer was spelled correctly on page 40, but that elsewhere the umlaut was omitted without substituting an additional "e." I realize that a lot of Americans treat European diacritical marks as if they were purely decorative and optional, but why then the correct spelling on page 40? At least no one stuck an "h" in it! No, I have to take that back--the Lens and Repro ad still puts an "h" in Voigtländer, and has done so for several months. And the B&H ad still refers to "Schnieder" loupes. I expect Steve will repeat his previous statement that he has "no control" over ad copy. I have always wandered what page layout program that is, which refuses to accept corrections to ad copy!

I wondered what lens cross-section was represented by the letter "d" in Figure 1 of the Voigtländer article. There is nothing about "d" in the caption, but I think it must be the Telomar.

The caption to Figure 3 in the scanning article refers to the "terst" scanners. A spelling checker should have caught that.

I note from page 2 that View Camera does have a copy editor (Becky Noland). No doubt she will get better with practice.

[Charles Hohenstein]

Oh, I forgot to say that I loved the Kerry Thalmann article on barrel lenses. But I have never seen a Kerry Thalmann article that I didn't really appreciate. The article on asymmetrical tilts was also great. As I said, I thought that everything in this issue was quite interesting.

[Carsten Wolff]

Yaaaaaawn,
Stop whinging all, start your own mag (as if!), enjoy life, excercise, drink less, dust off your Deardorff, Arca, whatever, get out there and take photos (unless that's not what you're about... ;-)).

Goodonya, Steve, for producing a decent mag, we're happy it's there.

Well, I'm off now. Sun's about to rise at Uluru...... Now, where's my Komura....

[Graeme Hird]

Hope you had a permit, Carsten ....