Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/12/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hello luggers, I am a scientific photograph who's been using either Nikon Fs or Leicaflex SLs for motorised photography. I must admit that the mechanical components of the SLs are much more silkier than those on the Fs! However, we broke many SL2 mot shutters by firing high speed with them! The F was behaving correctly but the MLU feature was not as good as on the F2 and F3, most of the time, the mirror mechanism was moving and somehow breaking. The only two cameras that were OK for this task were the F2 and the F3 that was even better, both used on leitz microscopes! Lately, we used an F4 that broke quite rapidly and an R5 on which the shutter went out after only a few days. I am not sure that the F5 would be better, because I think that for high speed and long series, the curtain shutter are the only ones that can be used with confidence (with a 250 or 750 frame back). For light measurement, I think that the photomic FTN is as good as the SL cds cells (it should be the same cells somehow). The SL2 is better but not as good as the silicon blue cells that are in the DP3 and DP12 photomic finders for F2. These latter as quite as good as the R4/R5/R6 metering systems. For general photography, the SLs seems to me much smoother than the Fs but they are at least as heavy or even more... Thib.