The word "alcohol" has a strange and tortured derivation.
As the "al" indicates, alcohol is an Arabic word meaning "the kohl." Kohl was
the powder Egyptians colored their eyelids with. As it was ground extremely
fine, "kohl" gradually came to be applied to any finely ground substance.
Going one step further in abstraction, alcohol came to mean "the fine part of."
With respect to intoxicating spirits, the term was originally "the alcohol of
wine" -- that is, the "fine" part that evaporated and then condensed when the
wine was heated. The "of wine" was gradually dropped, leaving the current
usage.
The modern arguments over camera automation started in the early '60s with the
introduction of SLRs with TTL metering. Thousands of photographers screamed
that TTL metering was an assault on "creativity" -- as if fiddling with a
handheld meter is going to improve the quality of your photographs. The fact is
that the best place for an incident-reading meter is behind the lens, where it
can read the same light that will expose the film.
Of course, an spot meter is of great use when you're trying to precisely
control the exposure. But the OM-4 providers spot metering in an easier-to-use
and easier-to-understand form than any handheld meter.
Auto exposure caused even more controversy, because it encouraged photographers
to shoot without thinking about what the appropriate lens opening or shutter
speed should be. Leica was so outraged that they ran an stating that they would
not put an exposure meter in their RF cameras "until creativity [had been]
automated." This automation of creativity must have occurred around 1972, when
the Leica CL appeared, but I never saw any magazine articles about it.
Every technical advance in cameras has been derided, but the fact is they make
it possible to take a technically perfect picture with less and less effort.
(Note, for example, the way some pro autofocus SLRs automatically compute the
correct amount of fill-in flash. Would you like to do that manually? With a
moving, changing subject? Hell, no!) Automation might encourage the
photographer to stop thinking, but that isn't the camera's fault. Contrary to
Nikon's slogan, it is the photographer who takes the picture, not the camera.
If he fails to use the tools at hand effectively, who's to blame?
Of course, retro equipment has its appeal. Who can deny the attraction of a
Leica M-4? Nothing fancy -- just focus and press the shutter release. I
sometimes take my Polaroid 360 to parties. The huge electronic flash,
Zeiss-Ikon rangefinder, and peel-apart film draw a lot more attention than an
SX-70 -- despite the greater technical sophistication of the latter.
One other thing. I don't know that it's been proven the eye focuses better than
a passive TTL system. But several cameras (such as Canon and Contax) have
multiple focusing points that are activated simply by looking at them. Such a
system has tremendous advantages for wildlife and sports photography.
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