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[OM] Re: Trip to the big city - looking at cameras

Subject: [OM] Re: Trip to the big city - looking at cameras
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 21:36:11 -0800
Brian Swale wrote:

>Moose wrote
>
>>Ever use a 50s Praktica with waist level finder? What an impossible 
>>camera! I can't see a damn thing! Focusing is a joke!
>>    
>>
>Tsch Tsch Tsch. That's my first 35mm camera you are slanging. :-))
>
>Those waist level finders had a magnifying glass to help focus.
>
>For me, graduating from a Kershaw King Penguin on a student's wage (which 
>I had in forestry in the 1950's) the Practika FX was a dream and I took many 
>fine shots including kodachromes that I still have in great condition. Had it 
>not been stolen from my room while in college I'd probably still have it. 
>Combined with a Weston Master exposure meter, it was a great way to learn 
>35mm photography.
>
>Yes, OM's are better, but the Practica was a good, affordable (especially at 
>Trade price) camera which served me very well.  Took it half way around the 
>world.
>
Although I did think something very like what I expressed when I looked 
through the thing a while ago, my pithy complaints with exclamation 
points were couched that way to echo AG's comments about DSLR 
viewfinders. I wished to draw a parallel between the state of film SLRs 
in the early post war years vs. their full development and the current 
early state of development of DSLRs.

The first 35mm SLRs used the model of the 6x6 TLRs for a viewfinder. The 
much smaller size of the finder image made them rather less than ideally 
suited to the kind of quick use their size invited, and that was 
available in rangefinder 35mm cameras. The advent of pentaprism finders, 
coupled meters visible through the viewfinder, auto diaphrams, etc. made 
them every so much easier to use and much more flexible. I suggest that 
the advent of yet a smaller sensor size renders the solution that was 
right for 24x36mm less than ideally suited to the revised purpose. I 
suspect that further development of the EVF will be the solution for 
small sensor DSLRs, as the pentaprism was for 35mm SLRs.

Moose




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