Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/11/16

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Aerial photography
From: Eric Welch <ewelch@ponyexpress.net>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 08:41:21 -0600

>More seriously, I think a manual system like the current R is not much 
>good for action or sports photography because the "hit rate" is way too 
>low compared to AF systems. 

Yeah? Well, shoot, I guess the pretty good sports pictures I've shot in the
past couple of weeks were accidents? Even when I had AF cameras, I often
turned it off, because in some sports, it's harder to get good pictures
than not, like baseball. But soccer, for sure, benefits from AF.

As for the two-ring vs. one-touch zoom concept, I'm of two minds. With a
one-touch, I can't focus and zoom at the same time. You zoom in or out, and
focus goes off its own merry way. With two-touch it takes a half-second to
zoom out or in with the thumb. 

It does takes some anticipation. When you see the quarterback lateral the
ball to the guy who is running at you, quickly zoom out and get ready for
him to pass by. It takes some knowledge of a sport for sure, but I don't
find two-ring zooms to be a problem at all, and when turning focus, I don't
worry about zooming accidently. It's like rubbing your stomach and patting
your head and chewing gum at the same time. One-touch zooms go in all
directions at the same time. I don't like them. 
- -- 

Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO
http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch

There's too much blood in my caffeine system.