Lessons of youth

Mission accomplished !

@larsman

I have a Nikon F sitting behind me on a book shelf with a couple lenses. I remember dreaming as a kid of some day owning a Nikon F series. It was of great pride when I could… then the best of the digital series and a dozen of their best lenses. It has been a very enjoyable ride… like putting together my audio system over a period of fifty years.

@mapman 

I just couldn’t resist.

When all was said and done (after getting sucked into all of the equipment hyperbole) what I came to realize was that using a manual camera (without auto focus, spot light meter, auto film advance, etc) and a good hand held light meter made a better photographer of me. It forced me to think much more about what I was doing. Auto focus and built in light meters were/are IMHO the death of creative photography. It took the acquisition of an F4 to reveal this to me. :-)

I see a correlation with this discovery and audio (and I learned this the hard way too). Modest equipment, properly used, can produce excellent results if one takes the time to learn how to use it, as opposed to trying to improve the experience by fantasy based  'upgrading'.

@newbee

There is no question what you say is true for me as well. As much as it is possible to turn off the auto focus and other auto stuff on a contemporary cameras… it just seems impossible to do it… at least for me. Forcing myself to think about depth of field made me control it. On the other hand the Leica does excel at some things that make it unique.

I was lucky enough to travel internationally nearly half time for many years. No matter how tired I was I would go out and do photography most every evening. I shot a Fiji X-pro or Nikon D800 (or predecessor). Under those circumstances the automation (fast changing street photography / low light) automation helped. But with time, forced manual use was of great value.