Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/11/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 09:39 AM 11/15/96 -0500, you wrote: >Leicaphiles, > >If the M7 shutter goes electronic, so must M7 lenses. And there's the rub. >Besides the discontinuity in the M line, electronic f stop electronics >introduce the problem of failure under adverse conditions -- related to the >nature of batteries. The lower tolerances and lesser number of aperture >blades is inevitable in an exposure- integrated meter system. So we'll be >losing Leica quality in our images. That's the ultimate consideration. > No, not at all. There are lots of cameras with electronic shutters with totally manual lenses--the Pentax 67 is one example. The question is not the nature of the shutter, but what exposure mode and other features you want. What I suggested in my long post was aperture-preferred automation, and that could be accomplished with no changes at all in the lenses. Why? Because when we meter with a rangefinder camera, we can meter at working aperture, since, unlike an SLR, we don't have to look through the lens. So there's no need to simulate stopping down to meter, either electrically or mechanically. Example?--the Minolta CLE. >We might even modernize ourselves out of lens interchangeability eventually >in the M, despite shutter priority. An electronic shutter also may mandate >the end of the great horizontally traveling M focal plane curtain because >shutter speeds may be jacked up to 1/8000. Another loss in quality. I don't know what the point about shutter priority is here. You couldn't have shutter priority autoexposure with the M camera without changing the lenses (because the camera would have to close them down), nor could you have program mode, but you could have aperture priority, which is why Minolta chose it in the CLE, and why I suggest it. As for the end of the M cloth shutter, that will have to happen if you want to up the flash synch speed, but not necessarily otherwise--the Pentax 67 has a horizontally traveling cloth electronic shutter. Charles E. Love, Jr. CEL14@CORNELL.EDU