Re: [Leica] was "State of the Art"

[Ben <ben@teco.net>]

Eric Welch wrote:

>That's a lot of ifs. And I can tell you from experience, the Nikon F5 would
>not give you the proper exposure in snow, regardless of the advertising
>copy's claims to the contrary.

Have you really used this camera, or only fondled it? For someone  who
claims to  have used it, you seem to disagree with 95% of the people who
have used it. It  won't get snow right 100% of the time, but people seem
to think it nails it most of the time. Here are some comments from some
REAL users...

John Adler <jadler@banff.net>
But the thing that
is most amassing to behold is this camera recognizes SNOW!  I think the
colour matrix metering is amazing, you got to see it to believe it.  Now
I
have a dilemma, will I forget to compensate when using my F90s [N90x]? 
I
don't need the F5, but it sure is wonderful to use.

"Rolland Elliott (Quality Assurance Co-Op)" <rolland@mead.e-mail.com>
I got to see some pictures taken with the F5 in full program
mode (the photographer didn't compensate for the exposure at
all) at the Nikon School in October.  The results were
amazing.  Back lighting, snow, high contrast scenes and
other scenes taken in the program mode came out fantastic. 

Not so.  The one thing that amazed me about my F5 was its uncanny
ability to
recognize snow!
In fact it is nice occasionally not to have to think about exposure all
the
time and just compose and shoot.  The main problem is when you to
another
camera body you have to remember to open up the extra stop and a half. 
The
F5 may not be perfect for all exposures but it certainly is the best I
have
used in seeing half a century.  You really should try this because the
F5
excels on snow.

Ed Yost <eyost@mindspring.com>
The spot meter in the F5 is like all other Nikon cameras and does not
utilize a RGB sensor. Furthermore, when photographing an all white or
all
black subject photographer intervened exposure compensation is needed to
ensure accurate exposure. However, the F5 can provide successful
exposures when introducing objects of other reflectance in the scene
such
as blue sky with white snow.

"Fred Whitlock" <afc@cl-sys.com>
Secondly, the 1005 pixel 3D color matrix meter is phenomenal-really
phenomenal.  Imagine a snowscape in which the meter renders the snow as
white.  Every other meter I have used in my life blindly renders snow as
a
middle gray.  We have all had to open up to get snow rendered as white.
How does the meter do it?  I don't know except that maybe the "color" in
the meter's name actually knows white from green.  Imagine a high
contrast
scene.  A doorway in shadow that fills two thirds of the frame with the
other third of the frame in bright sunlight.  The meter exposed the door
"correctly." It completely burned out the sunlit area of the frame.
Every
other meter I have used would have required you to open up from the
indicated meter reading. 

From: CTemkin@aol.com
Subject: F5 Exposure Meter

Last weekend, to test the exposure metering of the F5 in snow, I shot a
couple of rolls of Lumiere of my kids sledding.  I shot a mixture of
front-lit, side-lit, and back-lit shots, as well as some in shade, using
matrix metering without any compensation.  The results were
spectacular.  The
kids' faces and clothing were always correctly exposed.