Quote:
Originally Posted by JayUtah
Viewfinder, schmiewfinder. I used the Hasselblad MK/70 (equivalent to the EL/500) and the 38mm lens without a viewfinder and I had no problem framing shots.
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I concur with that. Back in the day I shot football games with a Hasselblad that belonged to my then-boss. It had the 45 degree viewfinder and I quickly discovered that I could cover the action more effectively by not even using the viewfinder.
The angled finder messed me up. As I tried to pan and follow the action, I would invariably tilt the camera up or down as my brain tried to "correct" for the disparity between what my eyes saw as vertical, and what my body
knew was vertical.
After a few frames I just started pointing the camera in the general direction of the action and firing off shots. It worked great. Of course this was all without the aid of a light meter as well. The large negatives and wide latitude of the film helped mitigate any errors I made in composition and exposure.
When I show people these photos and tell them the circumstances under which they were taken, their jaws usually drop. In this age of digital, automated "K.I.S.S." cameras, people have a difficult time believing that beautiful, razor sharp photos can be produced consistently with a complete and utter lack of automation. Of course, back then we did other things that are unheard of today, like enroll in photography courses and actually read photography books not for the pictures, but for the technical knowledge they contained.
