What's your favorite internet falsehood on photography?

[otto.f]

Crap is everywhere, since the Internet it's just more visible, which is positive. Since the internet we know that it's not very wise to admire Elon Musk

[Robert Bowring]

I have watched dozens of you tube videos on photography and at least 99% of them are just bull ****. The darkroom videos are the worst. I have yet to see one that evens shows how to make a proper test strip. There is a ton of misinformation out there.

[Mark Sawyer]

I'm always amused by the "bellows extension factor" explanations. There's no such thing. Just divide your bellows extension (lens center to ground glass) by the diameter of your aperture. That's your working f/stop.

But no, you have to divide this by that, square it, and use the "exposure compensation factor" to multiply your exposure time.

All these expert internet photographers, and none of them know what an f/stop actually is...

[Mark Sawyer]

Dear Drew,

...Please see https://www.largeformatphotography.i...=1#post1697018

I had the camera upside down, yet the image on the GG was still upside down.

Which way was the real world?

Signed, The-Earth-Is-Flat-God-Needs-A-Tire-Pump

You know, if you buy an Australian view camera and use it in the northern hemisphere, the image will be rightside up. Also, Australian Petzvals swirl counter-clockwise.

And the Flat Earth Society has members all around the world...

[Tin Can]

I did chuckle

Tx

Why don’t photographers suffer from GAS?
Because every time they buy something, they shutter!

[Eric Woodbury]

Ansel invented the zone system and is now alive and well as a fry cook in the Midwest somewhere.

[maltfalc]

I'm always amused by the "bellows extension factor" explanations. There's no such thing. Just divide your bellows extension (lens center to ground glass) by the diameter of your aperture. That's your working f/stop.

But no, you have to divide this by that, square it, and use the "exposure compensation factor" to multiply your exposure time.

All these expert internet photographers, and none of them know what an f/stop actually is...

rear nodal point and entrance pupil diameter, not lens center and aperture diameter. i just compare the lens' infinity focal length to whatever focal length it's currently extended to and think of the two measurements as f-stops. 90mm lens extended to 110mm means f/9 becomes f/11.

[maltfalc]

lens sunning, uv-c and all the other nonsense people buy into about fungus and photo gear.

[LabRat]

I have shocked some students and fotogs explaining basically changing 1 f stop was equal to changing one shutter speed relationship... They argued they didn't see that on the internet at all, but realized it might be important (maybe)...

Steve K

[Mark Sawyer]

rear nodal point and entrance pupil diameter, not lens center and aperture diameter. i just compare the lens' infinity focal length to whatever focal length it's currently extended to and think of the two measurements as f-stops. 90mm lens extended to 110mm means f/9 becomes f/11.

The center of a complex lens is so close to the rear nodal point that it will make no difference in determining the exposure. The error will be less than the shutter speed error even with a pretty accurate shutter. Seriously, how many of us have the nodal points marked on all our lenses?

And unless someone is pulling the front element to measure the aperture, yes, you're measuring the entrance pupil when measuring the aperture through the front element.

One of the neater little tricks I've seen is on an old lens I have, where the previous owner put a little scratch on the aperture scale at 1 centimeter opening. He could then set the aperture there, measure the bellows draw in centimeters, and immediately know the f/stop. 25 centimeters = f/25. 40 centimeters = f/40. And one could extrapolate f/stops up and down using the f/stop scale to determine f/stops up or down from there.