DP2M In Perspective

They did indeed care. In many ways, they were bigger gearheads than we are today for precisely the reason Roland mentioned. If you set out for a summer in the Sierras, you goldurn made sure that you hand the finest felt-lined, light-tight wooded cases, that you had replaced the springs on the shutters, that the screws on your tripods were in perfect working order. And you also did not even dream of taking just some old lens mounted on some old bellows.

In addition, these guys were reinventing the processes for developing substrates all the time. Later, the focus was on maximizing dynamic range (Minor White and later Ansel); ask Zone8, he knows.

Even today, the people, who hold to this traditional form of large-scale photographers, are very much in tune with their equipment and its quality.

http://www.viewcamera.com/

Alpa mines the same vein in the digital realm.

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Laurence
laurence at appledore-farm dot com
Sometimes, life is going to hit you with a brick. Don't lose faith.
Steve Jobs
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