Re: [Leica] Another M6 Question

[InfinityDT@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/11/99 10:57:14 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
bcaldwell@softcom.net writes:

<< The only way you can tell if you'd like the HM .85 M6 with a 35mm lens is 
to
 try one. If, like me, you wear eyeglasses, you probably won't. If you think
 that there might be a 28mm lens in your future, you'll have to use an
 auxilliary finder (fairly expensive) with the HM. On the other hand, the
 standard M6 has the 28mm brightlines and lets glasses wearers see the 35mm
 brightlines fairly easily.
 
 Even though I have two standard M6s, I still use the auxilliary finder for
 my 28mm lens. >>

This is exactly the same in my case.  To further it, because I use the M6 
mostly for scenic/travel photography, the fact that the framelines (in all 
M's) are set to show area covered at the lens' closest focusing distance has 
always presented another problem.  Various books and even the owner's manual 
makes reference to the fact that you get "a little" more on film than you see 
in the finder, but it's a *lot* more, in particular when you're shooting 
slides, using maximum DOF and composing to the edges. People who mostly use 
the Leica for people photography with out-of-focus backgrounds, or who have 
the luxury to do some cropping in printing, would probably care less about 
all this.  But for those who shoot scenics, check out the M6 framelines 
against your SLR and you'll see exactly what I mean.  It is most pronounced 
with the 50 and 90 frames (as you'd expect, since longer lenses show a 
greater change in effective focal length as they're focused) but oddly not 
much at 135 (I suspect those frames are actually not optimized for 
near-focus, as I can't find any other plausible explanation).  If you make a 
comparison, using landmarks on the horizon, between the Leica's 50 and 90 
frames and an SLR with 50 and 90 lenses you will be *astounded* at the 
discrepancy.  With the M2 and M4 I always used the add-on finders for 90 and 
135, and continued this practice with the M6, until I discovered that at 
distances over about 10 feet, the 75 frame almost exactly matches what a 90mm 
lens covers (a bit of a pain holding the preview lever but cheaper than 
changing the lensmount!); the 50 frame shows the 75's coverage; the 135 lens, 
just framing to the *outside* of the framelines is ok; and if you look 
through the finder from about 1" away (like people who wear glasses always do 
anyway) the area within the black eyepiece rectangle's periphery is a close 
approximation of the 50mm lens at longer distances (roughly, as one book 
states, about 3 additional thicknesses of the 50 framelines all around).  
This last one works less well with the HM finder, due to less area between 
the 50 framelines and the eyepiece border.  If I were to use an HM for my 
kind of photography I'd want a 50 add-on finder as well.
Again, this is really only relevant to people intending to use the Leica for 
carefully-composed slides at distances from about 10 ft on.

DT