Re: The autofocus Leica M...who cares?

[Wolfgang Sachse <sachse@msc.cornell.edu>]

	Hi Group -

	There have been an incredible number of postings guessing
	whether a/the post-M6 will be autofocus.

	I say, who cares? I won't buy one.

	I'm delighted with my M6 and I believe that I can focus
	it almost as fast as any autofocus system could. In fact,
	I often do much better. Those damn autofocus systems are
	sometimes nothing but whirring-hunt-whirring-hunt... Pray
	tell, how is the camera supposed to know what's imnportant
	to me that should be in focus? I've missed some great
	shots just last week at a fast moving fashion show. So,
	now if I'm sleepy and want to use auto-focus, OK, that's
	when I'll use my Nikon N90s in that mode!

	Until someone invents a synergistic camera system, a
	trained human being will likely be faster. Canon's
	EOS Elan IIe is getting close by determining what
	portion of the image the photographer's eye is focused
	on and setting the focus of the lens for that. It even
	does predictive autofocus! That system's available now.
	So even if Leica wanted to do something like this,
	they're playing catch-up.

	OK. Now that we've settled this, let's go take some
	pictures. Happy shooting!

	-- Wolfgang

	P.S.: I can't resist adding this: Just suppose that Leica
		will make a new follow-on camera to the M6. I wonder
		if they'll swallow their pride and call	it M7,
		knowing that that's the name used for the Mamiya 7.
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    Wolfgang Sachse                             Cornell University
    sachse@msc.cornell.edu      http://www.msc.cornell.edu/~sachse
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