[ExMiner]

These pictures are very powerful and moving to me. My father was career Air Force and spent a year in Danang. I was 11 years old at the time and I'll never forget the night he left. He told me to watch over my mom and sister while he was gone - that I was the man of the family. I don't think he really expected me to do that, but it was just his way of saying goodbye. I hadn't thought of that night for years but these pictures brought that memory back to me. That was 50 years ago and I still get a lump in my throat when I think about it.

[yucatanPentax]

War is dreadful; we need pictures like this to remind the young how bad things can get.
Interesting to see a range finder camera around his neck. No auto focus either. How would a DSLR survive those conditions? "Oh dear, I have flappy mirror and back focus problems, do you have a charged battery on you?"

Heie had his Pentax DSLR in Afghanistan and took one on a training exercise in the snows of Finland too. Although I appreciate your point, everything has changed in the electrically-equipped military today. And the cameras hold up pretty well.

[Obin Robinson]

Heie had his Pentax DSLR in Afghanistan and took one on a training exercise in the snows of Finland too. Although I appreciate your point, everything has changed in the electrically-equipped military today. And the cameras hold up pretty well.

Agreed. I've taken tens of thousands of photos while I've been in the military and I haven't had camera problems. The environment has ranged from scorching desert bases in the Middle East to frigid locations in the USA as well as offshore on aircraft carriers. The only camera problems I've ever experienced were after I damaged the cameras by dropping them and that's not unique to electronic cameras.


obin

[Xmas]

A lot of those shots were probably taken without metering, If you practiced the sunny 16 rule and had tons of experience you don't really need the camera to tell you what shutter speed and aperture you need to use for every shot. I have worked with a few people that were walking light meters. Amazing how well they could tell what settings to use without metering. Negative film has a pretty wide exposure range.

If you had to meter, it really wasn't that hard on many cameras. Press a lever to meter first shot. Just fire away for subsequent shots. If lighting conditions change you tweaked the aperture ring accordingly. Since you hand was already on the lens. focus and aperture adjustment were easy to do. If you grow up on manual focus then it is not any slower than auto focus for many shots. If you used the DOF scale on a lens and found that at f16, everything form 12 feet out was in focus, then you just set you focus to 12 feet and fired away.

Everyone on this site who has never used an older manual film camera should take one and try walking aournd the neighborhood with a roll of film in it and give the sunny 16 rule a try. You may be surprised at the results.

More exactly
In the earlier Korea conflict, the Canon, Nikon, lenses and rangefinders were found to be just as good (and cheaper) than the Ge equivalents.
When JFK put US special forces into Vietnam, some photogs would have regarded even a plain prism Nikon F as new fangled and a Canon P or Nikon SP as the tool of choice for 'close combat' - i.e. photos off fire fights.
If the choice was between packing an exposure meter and an extra cassette of Tri-x, the Tri-X won.
All of the sensible photogs donned flack jackets some carried 'defensive' hardware, an exposure meter v an ammo clip, the clip won
But sunny side /16 is still the norm for some and only needs a trade of of confidence and caution to be as effective for a noob as a war photog like Capa.
Our star (the sun) is very stable as a light source, (just like a flash gun) and you only need to compensate for clouds, shade and more than two hours away from sunrise or sunset.
Sunny 16 rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A noob needs to borrow an incident meter look at the clouds decide on exposure and check with meter, when they can always get to 1/3 of a stop they dont need the meter, an alarm on the iphone two hours before local sunset (for careless) helps.
My K1000s don't see a battery often, The meter needle is too compelling, without a battery it sits at ok exposure so I take the shot anyway, I miss shots otherwise.




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