My first thought was to say the lens has more effect. Without it, there is no image because, technically speaking, there would be no way to collect the available image-forming light and bring it to a common point of focus at the film plane, er... the sensor plane.
The camera controls many more functions than does the lens.
Yes, that is true. OTOH you should handle a mechanical camera at least once in your life. I suggest that you look at a 4 x 5 inch monorail/technical camera. Apart from not being able to be useful where size and speed are essential, there is nothing that such a camera cannot do. The multitude of functions and settings on current digital camera bodies have very little to do with creating/capturing images.
How do you think white balance was achieved prior to the advent of digital imaging? What about depth of field or sharp planes of focus? All that was required to capture an image was a light tight box, a lens, a shutter with a means of releasing it (preferably with a few different speed settings) an aperture on the lens that could be adjusted to vary the amount of incoming image-forming light and a shutter release.
The complexity of digital cameras derives from the designers trying to emulate the functions and facilities that could be found on any mechanical 35mm camera body. Do you really need a separate setting for aperture priority? Set the aperture to whatever you want to based on your need and meter for that setting.
The same can be said of shutter priority. Whatever is the speed that you cannot drop below, meter for that speed. The overhead inherent in having a computer on a chip work out every possible combination of exposure values for when you want to favour the aperture or the shutter speed (even if you never use them) strikes me as less than necessary.
There was a time that one simply HAD to have a prime lens to get real quality.
Absolutely! I was one of the fools who had believed the marketing men and I had stupidly bought the much vaunted Nikkor 43 ~ 86mm f/3.5 lens, which was supposed to be a fantastic lens by all accounts. What a dog! The experience stopped me buying any more zoom lenses until 2004.
and now there's a chip in nearly everything.
Even on my shoulder... given the huge move towards automation of just about everything and that leaves me wondering how many more custom functions I need before I can become a professional photographer.
Not having any medium format experience at all, I would like to know if there are any lens issues there?
Medium format lenses have less work to do than 35mm and smaller formats. The image magnification that is required is much less and the lenses are easier to design. Whether a 6x7cm silicon sensor will show the lenses to be not good enough, is a matter for speculation. In terms of film, the lenses were able to capture a far more subtle tonal gradation than smaller formats. Images tended to look smoother and sharper at any given size of print.
Jeff
Linear Mode
