From: donl@glass.esd.sgi.com (donl mathis)
Newsgroups: rec.photo
Subject: Re: Wooden fields as mantle pieces?
Date: 31 Jul 92 00:58:23 GMT
Reply-To: donl@glass.esd.sgi.com (donl mathis)
Distribution: rec
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA


In article <DENNY.92Jul30161531@helium.tss.com>, denny@tss.com (Denny
Page) writes:
|> Hmm...  I was in a camera store today (Bear Images in PA if anyone
|> is familiar) and briefly discussed my intended purchase of a Wisner
|> TF with the (owner?).
|>
|> [...]
|>
|> Comments?

Customer1, Customer2, and StoreOwner are worthless.  Wooden field
cameras most definitely are not.  :)

[We watch our writer climb up on a little soap box he has just
extracted from his back pocket...]

We have a problem in our society these days -- we've become so
overwhelmed with information that we've forgotten how to stop and
analyze to find out what the truth really is.  We just accept
statements without expecting them to be backed up.

The store owner went just a little tiny way down the path of explaining
his point of view by talking about "warping" and that sort of thing.
Fine.  Denny's description made it sound as though the store owner's
position was a bit vague and unconvincing.

First volley of questions: does the store owner have *any* idea what
he's talking about?  How can he be right, when thousands of
photographers seem to happily use wooden field cameras, and some of the
best photographs in the world were made with wooden field cameras by
some of the best photographers in the world?  Has this store owner ever
used a wooden field camera in his life?  What kind?  Maybe it was a bad
one.  Has he ever used a normal one?  Or a good one?

Now, the question is -- why did customer 1 *really* want to get rid of
his Wisner technical field camera?  Was it warped?  Why, precisely, did
he consider it useless enough to want to trade it for a metal camera?
Did it have anything to do with placing confidence in the point of view
of the aforementioned store owner, who's credentials have not been
established?  Did it have anything to do with not knowing how to use
the camera?  Did customer 1 know anything about view cameras?  What
were his expectations, and which ones weren't met by this camera?  What
makes the metal camera better?

And, of course, all of the customer 1 questions should be applied to
customer 2, to find out what the heck *his* problem was.

Then, after you find out what the problems *really* were, you have to
decide how to solve them.  It's possible that the camera was bad;
Wisner should have happily fixed it.  The design is good, and the
camera is good, and perfectly useable, as evidenced by all the nice
pictures that have been taken with similar versions.  It's also
distinctly possible that the problems could be solved through
education, or the acknowledgement that these people shouldn't have been
trying to mess with such a nice camera to begin with.  Who knows?
Gotta find out.

-------

When you want to find the *real* answer -- just keep asking "why?" to
everything that comes up, and don't quit until you get the whole thing
figured out.  Or ask "How did that happen?" or "How can this be done?"
Ask, ask, ask.  Don't just accept what you're told.

- donl mathis at Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
donl@sgi.com