I saw something interesting yesterday on TV. It interested me anyway. I was watching the Monaco Grand Prix, well worth watching, if only to see Herr Schumacher emerging from the tunnel driving a 3-wheel Ferrari. An incident made more amusing as it occurred behind the safety car! But that's not what this is about. After the race, won by Jarno Trulli in a Renault, the TV cameras zoomed in on the celebrations in his pit garage. Someone was taking photographs with a rangefinder camera with an accessory viewfinder, which suggests an extreme wide angle lens. There he was firing frame after frame winding on the film with the thumb lever between shots. That got me thinking. There's a good deal of truth that the instant feedback of digital is a great learning tool. But I think there's a lack of the right sort of digital camera on the market. Digital cameras all have too much automation. And that doesn't help the process of learning. It's almost too easy to get a good shot. Beginners these days seem to be worried about entirely the wrong things. As a result, the basic skills of photography become hidden behind 'scene modes', megapixel counts and power-up times. Sure an auto eveything wonder box is great for the casual snap shooter, but as soon as you reach the limits of the automation, if you haven't got the skills to get the shot you want, you don't get the shot.

Give a student an old Pentax K1000, a few rolls of film and some basic instructions, and he'll come back with some photographs. By the 5th roll he'll have got the hang of it and by the 10th probably be getting some good shots. There's only three controls on a K1000. Shutter speed, aperture and focus. If a picture turns out bad, it's because you did something bad. Simple as that. Learn those basic skills and you're set up for life. Rely on automation, and you're limited to what the automation can do.

The guy with his rangefinder in the Renault pit garage yesterday clearly knew what he was doing. I'm guessing he was using a Voigtlander Bessa. A completely manual camera. He'd have preset the exposure and focus was able to fire off five or six shots in half as many seconds. I'd love to see them. He must have captured some great images. The user of a similarly priced digital, say a Canon G5, would be lucky to have got a focus lock in that time.

The moral of all this? Learn the basics? Take control? Use film? Take photographs? Take your pic! (pun intended!)

This is me advancing the film on my battered, totally manual and mechanical Pentax MX. What thumbs were made for!