article idea for View Camera

[Jimi]

Perhaps the art lies in knowing what tool (lens in this case) to choose for each and every occasion. Or if you only got one, how to maximise the use of it!

I would find it very interesting to see how different people use their equipment, especially old lenses and old cameras. Not only the "I heard somewhere about someone who..." but more of the actual "I did this and this is how I did it".

Just my 2 cents...

[Hugo Zhang]

My works are not good enough for your readers yet. But here is a camera with a lens which are old enough to qualify. It's a shameless self-portrait taken with another aged camera and a lens in its 50s: A Deardorff and an apo-lanthar 30cm.

[domenico Foschi]

"Cameras and lenses are just tools. The art is far more important that the tools."

Very true, but in this case we are talking of actually using these tools as an extension of our vision.
I am convinced that obsessing on tools is missing the point. I think of what I want to achieve inthe image andfrom that I make the choice of lens more suitable for the job, which dictates the kind of cameras I need to employ, then comes the processing stage that can greatly help to get to the result.

Ken, thank you for your comment.
My bank account reminds me of that all time too.

[domenico Foschi]

Hey Hugo,
I will see you soon, then allright?

[Bruce Watson]

Cameras and lenses are just tools, I agree. But the phrase "just tools" implies to me a disregard of the value of using the correct tool for the job, and the immense amount of work that has gone into perfecting said tools.

"The art is more important than the tools."
Yes, I agree. But just as I wouldn't use a 5kg sledgehammer to drive a nail, I wouldn't use a 90mm Super-Angulon to do portraits on 4x5" film. The end result - the "art" - is very much dependent on the tools you choose to use in making it.

Let's try it like this. Would you want to see portfolios of paintings in a painting magazine where the qualifier was a certain type of brush? I wouldn't be interested in that either.

If the image is interesting, I might like to know how it was made. But not the other way around. Clearly, YMMV.

[Oren Grad]

Let's try it like this. Would you want to see portfolios of paintings in a painting magazine where the qualifier was a certain type of brush? I wouldn't be interested in that either.

Let's try it like this. Would you like to see portfolios of paintings in a magazine devoted to art techniques, which explain all the different types of brush and show you the effects you can achieve by selecting each type?

View Camera is both an art and a technique magazine. Readers who don't want their contemplation of art distracted by detailed considerations of technique can always buy LensWork, Aperture and the like.

[Bruce Watson]

Let's try it like this. Would you like to see portfolios of paintings in a magazine devoted to art techniques, which explain all the different types of brush and show you the effects you can achieve by selecting each type?

Maybe, but that's not the question.

[Colin Robertson]

Good evening Bruce. The paintbrush analogy is an intersesting one. A friend of mine who is a painter recently invited my wife and I to see his new studio. I have never seen so many brushes in one place. All used, each for some very particular function. Painters, and the best cabinet-makers, don't worry about being 'tool obsessed'. They use what works, they don't use what doesn't. Should we be different?

[Ole Tjugen]

Let's try it like this. Would you want to see portfolios of paintings in a painting magazine where the qualifier was a certain type of brush? I wouldn't be interested in that either.

If the image is interesting, I might like to know how it was made. But not the other way around. Clearly, YMMV.

We do agree, we just have radically different ways of approaching the same opinion!

Speaking as a painter (which I haven't "played at" for about 20 years), I know that different brushes give different strokes, and lend themselves to different styles of painting. So it is with lenses too; but since there is several "layers of technology" between us and what the lens does we don't experience that as directly.

Of course using the same brushes Rembrant used won't make you Rembrant, just as using Ansel's lenses won't make you Ansel Adams. Yet there are cases where the lens used has left a "signature" on the picture, which is no less distinctive than Rembrant's stroke. What could be interesting is a modern comparison of images made using "classic" lenses with otherwise "modern" tools. "Modern" here is used only in the loosest sense; one of my newest cameas is a model that has been produced virtually unchanged for the better part of a century. Modern film is far better than any of the plates available a century ago, so how much difference will the old glass make?

We all know that barring accidents, all modern lenses are very sharp and very well corrected for just about everything. Old lenses (I think 1940 is far too modern, BTW) tend to have been optimised for one thing, which may or may not be what they're used for now. A prime example is the Petzval portrait lenses, which were made to be very fast as well as sharp over a 30° central area. The "modern usage" is to show the whole field of illumination out to about 50°, which is where the so-called "characteristic Petzval swirl" is. But at the time when these lenses were predominant the central sharp area was all that was used (if the photographer owned a lens of the necessary focal length, quite often he didn't), and the pictures were very very sharp indeed. Same with the Rapid Rectilinear / Aplanat type lenses. These were the predominant lenses used for better than 40 years, and stayed in production for at least 30 years after the far superior Anastigmats were invented. There were several reasons for this, and price is only one of them.

I think it's about time to stop now. Either that, or Steve Simmons can make me an offer for an article...

[darr]

I would be interested in viewing the pictures and reading the data if the value of using the particular lens is shown in the work.

For example, I bought a Cooke PS945 because I like using one lens for portraits, but I also like to be creative. This includes the ability to control softness and sharpness, and not having to add or subtract filters either in camera or digitally. I understood the uniqueness of this lens from trying other similar lenses while employing creative techniques. I wanted all this in just one lens. I would be interested in seeing work from the older P & S lenses that evolved to the development of the PS945.

I think if you are able to educate the reader on the visual uniqueness of the older lenses, then IMO the article/portfolio would be very successful. If the images just show lack of dof and aberrations from uncoated lenses without the visual quality of tying it altogether with the aesthetics, then I think it may fall short.

Just my 2 cents.