Seven Levels of Photography

Leica...what the hell's a Leica ?

<p>If I have enough money, I would go and buy a Leica just for its status. For now, I don't know for sure which is better, Leica or my Nikon D70s. What I know after reading Ken's thoughts, is that I put my D70s in my bag, and picked up my dad's Canon AE-1, then go out for a shoot. It is the best way to put my skill to test, and to remind myself not to let any machine empowers over ability to see. It also helps me focus on what I see... and I said "me", not the camera. No matter how sharp the lens is, there will be no good photo if I were out of focus.<br>

P.S. I signed up to photo.net just for this purpose. Hopefully, it is worthwhile.</p>

<p>you guys are right. I'm going to return my old TLR and books on exposure and composition and I'm going to put it towards a 5d MkII. Who needs composition when you got 5fps?<br>

WHAT WAS I THINKING?!</p>

<p>Whenever I look at a photo, everytime I look at a photo, I never, ever, think to myself "What kind of camera took that." Never. Camera doesn't matter. Some tools suit some people better than others, but the job can always be done by someone else, with some other tool, in some other way. Dont kid yourself otherwise.</p>

<p>I worked in Photo Retail for 13 years and went through several camera systems with the exception of Nikon and Leica.<br>

Equipment should be a means of you obtaining the picture, if a Leica M9 or MP etc helps you do that then the price is secondary.<br>

Usually, the problem with results is poor technique and not equipment.<br>

A Leica M9 is of no use if you cannot hold it steady.<br>

However, I've owned a Leica Minilux in the past. When loaded up with Kodak CN400 B&W film-I took some of my best pictures ever with that camera.</p>

<p>I too was very happy to discover KR's site some months ago and he made a big difference to how I thought about doing things. That in no way means I stopped looking at gear, but it did make me think more about why I wanted the gear and made me concentrate more on IQ and real-world benefits with adjusted technique rather than the coolness factor. So I got the sharpest prime I could afford, went from Manual to Aperture Priority and did some test shots to find out exactly how to get the best IQ from my body. When previously I'd have been thinking about what "a professional' does (e.g. thinking I had to be in full manual mode to be taken seriously) I started to think about the best way to get what I wanted from the camera. Spending an entire day with the same focal length, aperture, ISO and even focus-point allowed me to forget about my camera and think about what I was seeing. I'm only out of daipers, photography-wise, but I think it's useful to be reminded what's important in a contructive, impersonal and light-hearted way, rather than have some smart-alecs post "It's not about the gear". It was funny when I was in the Beijing Summer Palace, seeing all the newly monied walking around with huge zooms on 7Ds looking at my small D5100 and miniscule manual focus 50mm f/1.8D with un-disguised contempt. Little did they know my images were much much sharper, much further into dusk.</p>