Amateur Photographer - UK (2021-11-27)

http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk 19

YOUR LETTERS

days when screen
resolution was much
smaller than it is today
and unless you want to fill
the screen with a forced
enlargement, the old
pictures look tiny. In our
house we have an iPad,
an iPad Mini, a MacBook
Air, a MacBook Pro and an
iMac. All have significantly
different screen
resolutions and I find the
best quality comes from
sizing the image to match
the screen. This ensures
that I, and not the
computer, decide how it
will appear on screen.
Like a number of other
people over the past 18
months, the camera and
the garden have given me
something to fall back on
when travel was off limits.
It has made that period
easier to cope with.
Stuart Gooda

Charities in bed

with dealers?

When I asked about the
scarcity of camera
equipment at my local
charity shops, I was told
by certain shops that
there was an
‘arrangement’ with a
camera dealer who would
get first refusal. As a test
I donated some decent
and sellable film SLRs to
see whether they
appeared in the shop

window. To no surprise at

all, they did not.

Paul O’Sullivan

Deputy Editor GeoffHarris

replies: Certain charities

may do such deals, but

this doesn’t seem to be a

widespread practice – I

recently donated a spare

Minolta 35mm lens to a

charity shop and they

promptly put it on display

rather than calling up a

dealer for first dibs.

Oxfam also has lots of

used camera gear for sale

on its website, and I got a

lovely Olympus OM

from one of their stores a

while ago. Do other

readers have any similar

stories?

Achtung ‘aggressive

terminology’

Enough already! Every day

I read about ‘progressives’

moaning about various

words that are supposed

to be incompatible with

current mores. And then

I turn to AP and what do

I see? Jon Bentley

(Viewpoint, 6  November)

suggesting that we as

photographers should

abandon such aggressive

terminology as ‘take’,

‘shoot’, ‘capture’ and

‘trigger’. But these words

have been a part of our

lexicon since God was a

boy; we all know what they

mean and they also

describe very well the

activity involved.

Those wishing to

sanitise our language

want to destroy its beauty

and colour so as not to

frighten the horses. The

politically correct tendency

comprise a tiny minority of

the population. Let’s

ignore them!

Barry Shaw

Editor Nigel Atherton

replies: I’ve often wrestled

with the inappropriateness

of some of the verbs used

in photography when it

comes to writing

headlines and

coverlines, struggling to

find alternatives to ‘how to

shoot birds’ or ‘shoot

children’ when the word

photograph is too long.

The word capture doesn’t

seem suitable either: ‘how

to capture badgers’. Yes of

course people know what

is meant but that doesn’t

make it any better. This is

nothing to do with

‘political correctness’... as

you point out, the English

language is constantly

evolving.Though I

certainly have no intention

of stopping using words

like shoot and capture I

don’t seeanything

‘beautiful’ about them and

have no problem with

sometimes using better

alternatives.

Oxfam often has plenty of second-hand camera gear for sale on its shop website

©

MA

RTI

N (^) E
VEN
ING
©
AND
Y (^) W
ES
TLA
KE
CON
TEN
T^ FO
R^ N
EXT
WE
EK’
S^ IS
SUE
MA
Y^ B
E^ S
UBJ
EC
T^ TO
CH
AN
GE
Motorsports monster
Andy Westlake assesses the Canon
EOS R3 and its Eye control AF
A special legacy
AP finds out more about a moving
exhibition on Holocaust survivors
Ordinary pictures
Peter Dench on the iconic PicturePost
and the people behind it
How you can improve your
shooting technique to
achievethe ideal exposure
Perfect
exposure
In next week’s issue
On sale every Tuesday