Re: [Leica] Motor drive battery packs

[Dan Cardish <dcardish@microtec.net>]

Well, what you say about the R8 may be true, but the Minolta 9 is no light
weight; infact, it weighs about one ounce more than the R8 (without
batteries or lens, 910 gms vs 890 for the R8).  As far as robustness is
concerned, the 9 has been tested to 100,000 exposures, so it is somewhat
robust.  Perhaps the internal gears are all plastic, but I doubt it.   The
camera is meant to be used.  The only plastic visible to my eye is the hand
grip.  Everything else is metal (zinc diecast and stainless steel,
reasonably top grade metals), including the back.

Sorry, but I'm not convinced that Leica is on top of this motor drive problem.

Dan C.


At 09:13 PM 02-08-99 -0300, you wrote:
>Dan:
>
>Leica's problem is that since they have a normal wind lever and a very
>robustly made camera, it takes just too much energy to get all that top
>grade metal moving.  In the case of your Minolta and similiar cameras,
>there is a lot less mass that needs to get accelerated when the motor runs.
> In other words, most cameras have adopted low mass plastic gear trains.
>You can tell just by the weight of the R8 that there isn't much platic in
>it.  If you read between the lines, what Leica said is they were trying to
>solve a power consumption problem.  I imagine they could get six frames per
>second out of it, but the motor would probably need a car battery over your
>shoulder to be able to supply the current required.
>
>Regards,
>
>Robert