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Author Topic: The modern car vs. horseless carriage: Dragging MF into the electronic era?  (Read 8924 times)

Theodoros

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Ah, you were an early adopter of the cellphone and got one that lasts forever :)

Edmund

Actually I had 2 I-phone (4&4s) stolen until 3 years ago, but never shot a picture with them or used them for web, so I decided to give up on the subject! I use a basic NOKIA now, the bugger can even fit in my pocket... Can you believe that? It even takes calls and allows me to call back!  ;D

EDIT: Only problem is that it is so small, that you look around your pockets (terrified) to check if it is there or lost...  ::)
« Last Edit: July 21, 2016, 07:31:16 pm by Theodoros »
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BobShaw

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I was mildly interested in this post by the title but unfortunately it withered rapidly.

Does medium format need to dragged into the electronic era? Well I have a Canon 5Ds, sort of latest and greatest, and a Hasselblad H3DII-39 about 8 years old. Nothing wrong with the Canon, it is good for things that a Canon is good for, but the Hasselblad has better colour and better accuracy with 16 bit and still does what I want. If I get to the next model the H4 then it has True Focus, which I don't think any other new camera has. Also the Hasselblad is modular, so I can use the back on other things like a view camera without a huge (in the Canon case 75mm) added flange depth.

Do you buy a mobile phone to make phone calls? Nokia thought that and almost disappeared from the market. Actually making phone calls is a minor part of a mobile phone these days. You are much more likely to do one of many other things that apps allow. I am currently interviewing for a government job and the candidates must have a smart phone with iOS 8 or Android 5 to even apply. An MBA won't help. It's a changing world.

So summarising the half dozen odd posts on similar things lately.
Everyone actually using medium format and many who never will are excited by the X1D. That's why there are half a dozen similar posts.
Ford is never going to make buggy whips.
Hasselblad is never going to make adapters for Contax. I would like to own a Contax. It would look good on the shelf with the other vintage cameras.
I extremely doubt that Hasselblad will continue investing in three different series of medium format cameras. You won't see much new stuff for the V series.
I doubt that Hasselblad will worry too much about new things for H1 compatible cameras either. We are 14 years down the track now. Get integrated and enjoy the benefits.

I just got an email from our Phase One dealer and they are now taking pre-orders for Hasselblad X1D! So I guess everyone can see the future.

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ErikKaffehr

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Hi,

Just to make a small point, 16 bit on the Hasselblad or Phase one is just sales talk. The only MFD that has 16 bits is the IQ3 100. The IQ350 is definitively 14 bit, although it puts it's data in a 16 bit container.

The raw files on Phase One have never been wider than 14 bits, until the IQ3-100 arrived. Hassy actually had 16 bit files but they contain about 13 bit of data and 3 bits of noise on the CCD backs. The CMOS backs are 14 bits.

I am pretty sure Hasselblad will make backs for the V-series. There is a huge market for V-backs as something like 500000 V-series cameras have been sold. Problem is that backs are still expensive.

But, it is very clear. The V-system is dead in the sense that never will a V-series body made again. Adapters for V-series, I wouldn't rule out.

H-series is sort of interesting. It is optimised for P45+ size sensors. The lens programme is on the long side for 44x33 sensors. I think that Phase is selling a lot of full frame 645, not sure about Hasselblad. Focusing on a single size of sensor makes a lot of sense. Just to say, Sony has a roadmap for sensors for sure and all MFD makers are aware of that roadmap.

Best regards
Erik


I was mildly interested in this post by the title but unfortunately it withered rapidly.

Does medium format need to dragged into the electronic era? Well I have a Canon 5Ds, sort of latest and greatest, and a Hasselblad H3DII-39 about 8 years old. Nothing wrong with the Canon, it is good for things that a Canon is good for, but the Hasselblad has better colour and better accuracy with 16 bit and still does what I want. If I get to the next model the H4 then it has True Focus, which I don't think any other new camera has. Also the Hasselblad is modular, so I can use the back on other things like a view camera without a huge (in the Canon case 75mm) added flange depth.

Do you buy a mobile phone to make phone calls? Nokia thought that and almost disappeared from the market. Actually making phone calls is a minor part of a mobile phone these days. You are much more likely to do one of many other things that apps allow. I am currently interviewing for a government job and the candidates must have a smart phone with iOS 8 or Android 5 to even apply. An MBA won't help. It's a changing world.

So summarising the half dozen odd posts on similar things lately.
Everyone actually using medium format and many who never will are excited by the X1D. That's why there are half a dozen similar posts.
Ford is never going to make buggy whips.
Hasselblad is never going to make adapters for Contax. I would like to own a Contax. It would look good on the shelf with the other vintage cameras.
I extremely doubt that Hasselblad will continue investing in three different series of medium format cameras. You won't see much new stuff for the V series.
I doubt that Hasselblad will worry too much about new things for H1 compatible cameras either. We are 14 years down the track now. Get integrated and enjoy the benefits.

I just got an email from our Phase One dealer and they are now taking pre-orders for Hasselblad X1D! So I guess everyone can see the future.
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Theodoros

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With MF there are two completely different approaches by consumers (and therefore users)... One kind is the consumer that looks to it as a larger/better DSLR alternative and another is the traditional user, mainly pros that expect it to function as it traditionally did at the film days...

The first type of consumer is expecting from the system to perform at least as good as DSLRs do in all the areas that DSLRs perform well (low light, AF, ease of use, perhaps video ability ...etc). The second type of consumer wants to supplement his DSLR use and therefore ignores functions that he uses his DSLR system as to perform... He doesn't care for higher Iso performance, or AF speed and accuracy as he would use his DSLR anyway to perform these tasks... He rather cares for compatibility of the MFDB with the lenses he uses on his view camera, the color accuracy, the software calibration accuracy alignment with the sensor and all other functions that supplement the use of his DSLR system...

The modern CMos backs however, brought a function that is of major importance to both the above mentioned types of consumers... That being LV... I believe that if LV was of decent quality on the backs sold a decade ago, the MF market base would have been much wider by now... The thing is that the "b-type" of consumers are pretty disapointed because the modern CMOs backs don't perform well enough when adapted to the same use as their older backs, especially with the lenses they have on their view cameras... One should therefore expect the "gap" that is described on the O/P (which is the same as the "a" and "b" type of MF users described here) to increase... I expect there will be a mass market increase that will be dominated by the "a" type of consumers and then a "high-end" section of users that will stick to their habits of use as they where during the past decades with film and then MFDBs, that will continue to make awesome pictures as they did all the past decades using the same "ancient" equipment that they always did as to make them...
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eronald

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I was mildly interested in this post by the title but unfortunately it withered rapidly.

Does medium format need to dragged into the electronic era? Well I have a Canon 5Ds, sort of latest and greatest, and a Hasselblad H3DII-39 about 8 years old. Nothing wrong with the Canon, it is good for things that a Canon is good for, but the Hasselblad has better colour and better accuracy with 16 bit and still does what I want. If I get to the next model the H4 then it has True Focus, which I don't think any other new camera has. Also the Hasselblad is modular, so I can use the back on other things like a view camera without a huge (in the Canon case 75mm) added flange depth.

Do you buy a mobile phone to make phone calls? Nokia thought that and almost disappeared from the market. Actually making phone calls is a minor part of a mobile phone these days. You are much more likely to do one of many other things that apps allow. I am currently interviewing for a government job and the candidates must have a smart phone with iOS 8 or Android 5 to even apply. An MBA won't help. It's a changing world.

So summarising the half dozen odd posts on similar things lately.
Everyone actually using medium format and many who never will are excited by the X1D. That's why there are half a dozen similar posts.
Ford is never going to make buggy whips.
Hasselblad is never going to make adapters for Contax. I would like to own a Contax. It would look good on the shelf with the other vintage cameras.
I extremely doubt that Hasselblad will continue investing in three different series of medium format cameras. You won't see much new stuff for the V series.
I doubt that Hasselblad will worry too much about new things for H1 compatible cameras either. We are 14 years down the track now. Get integrated and enjoy the benefits.

I just got an email from our Phase One dealer and they are now taking pre-orders for Hasselblad X1D! So I guess everyone can see the future.

Nice to see Phase dealers move downstream into a lower price range: That's like seeing Ferrari dealers sell Porsche :)

My before the last cellphone was an iPhone 5, and I could barely understand people's speech or read the screen fonts. My new phone is an S6, it has wonderful sound, nice large fonts and terrible net reception; the battery runs out in the middle of every day. I can't use it on the  road as a navigator because it doesn't get a signal. I don't know what the smartphones are really for, apart from taking video, images and playing games.

Edmund
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samoore

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As long as the imaging platform consists of a single lens focusing on a single plane than why reinvent the wheel? The backs have been getting more clever, and so are SLRs... I love concepts like lens arrays, and the sheet camera that could make a future large format digital camera.
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BobShaw

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With MF there are two completely different approaches by consumers (and therefore users)... One kind is the consumer that looks to it as a larger/better DSLR alternative and another is the traditional user, mainly pros that expect it to function as it traditionally did at the film days...

I would say that consumers consume consumables. They buy a Canon 550D one year, show their friends, take a thousand shots, possibly in the same day, and put it on the shelf. Next year they buy a Canon 600D, then next year a Canon 650D etc. Each one has infinitely more capability than the single control they ever used. They buy numbers they don't understand. They have never read the manual. These are the people that DSLR camera makers love and exist for.

They don't buy $10,000 plus cameras. The people that buy these MF cameras buy into a system, possibly for life. or at least a commercially viable period.
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JoeKitchen

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I would say that consumers consume consumables. They buy a Canon 550D one year, show their friends, take a thousand shots, possibly in the same day, and put it on the shelf. Next year they buy a Canon 600D, then next year a Canon 650D etc. Each one has infinitely more capability than the single control they ever used. They buy numbers they don't understand. They have never read the manual. These are the people that DSLR camera makers love and exist for.

They don't buy $10,000 plus cameras. The people that buy these MF cameras buy into a system, possibly for life. or at least a commercially viable period.

+1 on this. 

Personally, the additional controls the technical camera gives me, especially for architecture and still life, outweighs everything else.  Personally I could give a damn about WiFi connectivity and anything else the iPhone provides. 

Additionally, insofar as the images I am creating for them to use, my clients could give a damn about whether or not I have those capabilities either.  All they care about is what I email them to review 10 days after the shoot ends, not what I can post the day of. 
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eronald

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+1 on this. 

Personally, the additional controls the technical camera gives me, especially for architecture and still life, outweighs everything else.  Personally I could give a damn about WiFi connectivity and anything else the iPhone provides. 

Additionally, insofar as the images I am creating for them to use, my clients could give a damn about whether or not I have those capabilities either.  All they care about is what I email them to review 10 days after the shoot ends, not what I can post the day of.

Joe,

 If I may be allowed to be argumentative for a minute, do you use C1? Or Phocus? Do you use Photoshop?

 IMHO better camera integration means better communication, but it also means moving more of the very labor-intensive manual image processing abilities directly into the capture workflow. Eg. being able to see perspective corrections at shoot time. If I want to shoot a picture of my house, I would like to be able to stand anywhere in front of it, mark my zone of interest to the camera, take some images by walking around, and then ask the camera to let me choose my point of view for the "perspective corrected money shot" on which of course all cars , pedestrians, lamp-posts and rubbish bins have been removed. And yes, I would like the camera to show me in the viewfinder what depth map it has created and what it knows it can retouch out, and where it still needs me to set up and take some more images so it has the data it needs. Yes, even if that entails stepping around a parked car and taking a closeup.

 
Edmund

PS Bernard: Just for a minute :P
« Last Edit: July 22, 2016, 09:13:06 pm by eronald »
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Gigi

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With MF there are two completely different approaches by consumers (and therefore users)... One kind is the consumer that looks to it as a larger/better DSLR alternative and another is the traditional user, mainly pros that expect it to function as it traditionally did at the film days...

The first type of consumer is expecting from the system to perform at least as good as DSLRs do in all the areas that DSLRs perform well (low light, AF, ease of use, perhaps video ability ...etc). The second type of consumer wants to supplement his DSLR use and therefore ignores functions that he uses his DSLR system as to perform... He doesn't care for higher Iso performance, or AF speed and accuracy as he would use his DSLR anyway to perform these tasks... He rather cares for compatibility of the MFDB with the lenses he uses on his view camera, the color accuracy, the software calibration accuracy alignment with the sensor and all other functions that supplement the use of his DSLR system...

The modern CMos backs however, brought a function that is of major importance to both the above mentioned types of consumers... That being LV... I believe that if LV was of decent quality on the backs sold a decade ago, the MF market base would have been much wider by now... The thing is that the "b-type" of consumers are pretty disapointed because the modern CMOs backs don't perform well enough when adapted to the same use as their older backs, especially with the lenses they have on their view cameras... One should therefore expect the "gap" that is described on the O/P (which is the same as the "a" and "b" type of MF users described here) to increase... I expect there will be a mass market increase that will be dominated by the "a" type of consumers and then a "high-end" section of users that will stick to their habits of use as they where during the past decades with film and then MFDBs, that will continue to make awesome pictures as they did all the past decades using the same "ancient" equipment that they always did as to make them...

+1, well put.
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JoeKitchen

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Joe,

 If I may be allowed to be argumentative for a minute, do you use C1? Or Phocus? Do you use Photoshop?

 IMHO better camera integration means better communication, but it also means moving more of the very labor-intensive manual image processing abilities directly into the capture workflow. Eg. being able to see perspective corrections at shoot time. If I want to shoot a picture of my house, I would like to be able to stand anywhere in front of it, mark my zone of interest to the camera, take some images by walking around, and then ask the camera to let me choose my point of view for the "perspective corrected money shot" on which of course all cars , pedestrians, lamp-posts and rubbish bins have been removed. And yes, I would like the camera to show me in the viewfinder what depth map it has created and what it knows it can retouch out, and where it still needs me to set up and take some more images so it has the data it needs. Yes, even if that entails stepping around a parked car and taking a closeup.

 
Edmund

PS Bernard: Just for a minute :P

I know this is how many amateurs and hobbyists think, but it does not work like that. 

You pick one composition and then you pure your heart and soul into that one composition, making it the best you can possibly make it.  Doing otherwise is futile at best, and a waste of time. 

I have found repeatably that when I shoot on the fly or allow my focus to be spread out amongst too many subjects or compositions, the work is never anything worth keeping. 

"The picture is good, or not, from the moment it was caught in the camera."  Henri Cartier-Bresson

PS. Insofar as depth maps and etc., if your energy is spent almost everyday taking pictures, where it is most often the only thing you think about, and you spend countless hours honing your craft, learning your gear and lenses, then you should be able to see those depth maps, and etc, and how your various lenses will render the subject in your head without giving too much thought, even before you look through the view finder.  If after all these hours you can't, you may have picked the wring line of business. 
« Last Edit: July 22, 2016, 10:39:05 pm by JoeKitchen »
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eronald

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I know this is how many amateurs and hobbyists think, but it does not work like that. 

You pick one composition and then you pure your heart and soul into that one composition, making it the best you can possibly make it.  Doing otherwise is futile at best, and a waste of time. 

I have found repeatably that when I shoot on the fly or allow my focus to be spread out amongst too many subjects or compositions, the work is never anything worth keeping. 

"The picture is good, or not, from the moment it was caught in the camera."  Henri Cartier-Bresson

PS. Insofar as depth maps and etc., if your energy is spent almost everyday taking pictures, where it is most often the only thing you think about, and you spend countless hours honing your craft, learning your gear and lenses, then you should be able to see those depth maps, and etc, and how your various lenses will render the subject in your head without giving too much thought, even before you look through the view finder.  If after all these hours you can't, you may have picked the wring line of business.

Joe,

 Every tech brings its art. I have no particular love for Cartier Bresson, but no photographer can refuse him great respect. Since you cite him,  I believe his much of his art was the product of the fast films of the day and the handheld Leica and its wides. I think it is about time that a "really digital" camera emerged, similar to the Leica of its day, and its artists. Or maybe it already has and is called the iPhone, and its millionaire artist is Kim Kardashian.

 As for depth maps, I meant that a modern camera can tell you what is where in front of you, and therefore automatically pick out objects like trash-cans that will end up edited out, and can tell you to photograph what is behind them so it can be inserted in the final image.

 
Edmund
« Last Edit: July 22, 2016, 11:32:34 pm by eronald »
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razrblck

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Photoshop's content aware tools work greatly to remove unwanted clutter (and works even better with high resolution images). It's always better to actually remove that bin in the first place, especially if you have so much time on your hand to move around and take a bunch of photos.

It would be nice for cameras to recognize clutter and provide means to remove them before getting the photo to a computer, but that kind of image recognition is still quite a few years away and modern cameras have nowhere close the computing power required to do this in real time (or a reasonable time) anyway.


You pick one composition and then you pure your heart and soul into that one composition, making it the best you can possibly make it.  Doing otherwise is futile at best, and a waste of time. 

I have found repeatably that when I shoot on the fly or allow my focus to be spread out amongst too many subjects or compositions, the work is never anything worth keeping. 

I fully agree on this and I wish I knew this sooner, but you live and learn. :)
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ErikKaffehr

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Hi,

One way to see it, there is no good reason for film size formats in the digital world. Obviously a lens programme covers a given image diagonal. It is not very feasible to use larger sensors than what lens diagonal can cover. Even to that may be an exception. We could make a square sensor say 36x36 mm that would allow for 24x36, 36x24, 31x31, 29x36 within the image circle of 43 mm. The full sensor would have a diagonal of 51 mm, and that would fall outside the 43 mm diagonal, but it may still be usable with many lenses.

Best regards
Erik
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synn

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Joe,

 If I may be allowed to be argumentative for a minute, do you use C1? Or Phocus? Do you use Photoshop?

 IMHO better camera integration means better communication, but it also means moving more of the very labor-intensive manual image processing abilities directly into the capture workflow. Eg. being able to see perspective corrections at shoot time. If I want to shoot a picture of my house, I would like to be able to stand anywhere in front of it, mark my zone of interest to the camera, take some images by walking around, and then ask the camera to let me choose my point of view for the "perspective corrected money shot" on which of course all cars , pedestrians, lamp-posts and rubbish bins have been removed. And yes, I would like the camera to show me in the viewfinder what depth map it has created and what it knows it can retouch out, and where it still needs me to set up and take some more images so it has the data it needs. Yes, even if that entails stepping around a parked car and taking a closeup.

 
Edmund

PS Bernard: Just for a minute :P

Someone decided that a computer should be the main tool for creating music instead of real people using real instruments and look at the state of today's music.

If you want to only press the button on the camera and expect everything else to be automated, you're not a photographer. You're a button pusher.

For a real photographer, one who is passionate about his images, the process of photography does not end with pressing the button. Everything that happens afterwards is part of the process as well.

It's fine to wish for that sort of automation. That makes you a consumer, not a professional or even an advanced enthusiast. This is why no one who is paying big amounts for high end imaging solutions is asking for such automation. This is also why your posts are, more often than not, so out of place in this forum.
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Joe,

 Every tech brings its art. I have no particular love for Cartier Bresson, but no photographer can refuse him great respect. Since you cite him,  I believe his much of his art was the product of the fast films of the day and the handheld Leica and its wides. I think it is about time that a "really digital" camera emerged, similar to the Leica of its day, and its artists. Or maybe it already has and is called the iPhone, and its millionaire artist is Kim Kardashian.

 As for depth maps, I meant that a modern camera can tell you what is where in front of you, and therefore automatically pick out objects like trash-cans that will end up edited out, and can tell you to photograph what is behind them so it can be inserted in the final image.

 
Edmund

The way I see it is much simpler than that, I've seen no better photographs out of digital sensors than they already where from the film days and I've seen no improvement in one's photography with modern sensors than the ones made with the (now considered ancient) 22mp sensors... As far as I can tell, it's rather the opposite happening (photographs are becoming worst with time).

IMO it has to do with people thinking of the tool above skills instead of the opposite... I have of course met some (individual) photographers that have improved their work with time but in no case out of those I know, it was because of upgrading the tool they where using before...

I believe that cinema is a good example to prove the above since the "tech advancement" in imaging converges all the time... One has to wonder why motion pictures improve with time while photography (as a media) seems (at least) stationary...

One has also to wonder as to why the most successful artists in both media prefer to use trusted tools as to work with...

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eronald

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You pick one composition and then you pure your heart and soul into that one composition, making it the best you can possibly make it.  Doing otherwise is futile at best, and a waste of time. 




Joe,

 That quote of yours is so good it ought to be sold framed in camera shops :)

 I don't live like that, but I have great respect for those that do.
 
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JoeKitchen

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Joe,

 Every tech brings its art. I have no particular love for Cartier Bresson, but no photographer can refuse him great respect. Since you cite him,  I believe his much of his art was the product of the fast films of the day and the handheld Leica and its wides.

 
Edmund

I am not either, but, as you say, one can not ignore his legacy.  However I do know that Cartier-Bresson was known to compose an image and wait and wait and wait until the right person in the right spot happened to walked by. 

Of course, much of the time it happens faster then others, especially in a busy and crowded city, but some of his most famous images where the product of just waiting in the same spot for hours. 
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ErikKaffehr

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33 minutes later
« Reply #38 on: July 23, 2016, 03:19:30 pm »

33 minutes later...

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eronald

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I am not either, but, as you say, one can not ignore his legacy.  However I do know that Cartier-Bresson was known to compose an image and wait and wait and wait until the right person in the right spot happened to walked by. 

Of course, much of the time it happens faster then others, especially in a busy and crowded city, but some of his most famous images where the product of just waiting in the same spot for hours.

Yes, I once wrote a humorous column on waiting, for Publish.com, and a copy is still available on the web.
http://www.openphotographyforums.com/art_Edmund_Ronald_002.php

But some guys - and I think Cartier Bresson- also have the ability to just magic a scene into appearing.

Edmund
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