[Leica] Leica Trica

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Mark Rabiner offered:
>>> Day one on the Lug was the new "Contax" G system just coming out;
> And the desperate need in some peoples minds for Leica to get with it and 
> go
> auto focus.
> Some of us at that point had already been using SLR's and been having fun
> auto focusing. But most of us knew what out pre AF pictures looked like;
> they looked just fine.
> And most of us were comfortable with pre focusing or enjoying the highly
> accurate focusing of our M's and LTM's.<<<<<

Hi Mark,
Quite correct that we long-time daily Leica M  and R camera users  were/are 
quite adept at manual focus from table tops to high speed sports events. 
It's called years of daily use
for 50 years or so. I always took pride in my ability when shooting sports 
and catching the moments of speed and action manual focus only. I always 
thought I was faster than auto focus!  Until I tried it some years ago. No I 
didn't change as I still got lots of peak action moments manual focus.

However, today due to many "I will die with my manual focus Leica in my 
hands" folks becoming more involved with digital auto focus slr's of various 
makes (me for one, due to vision loss in my one good eye.) :-(  I now use a 
Canon auto focus slr for much of my main photography. Other than when I use 
the M8, because without a doubt the rangefinder still works absolutely 
perfect, even with lessoning the sight I still can make out the focus patch 
just fine. Thank you Great Spirit!.

I'd be very surprised if some day Leica doesn't have a string of auto-focus 
lenses available, maybe not in my life time, but if and when  they come out 
with a smashing new SLR it will be with new autofocus lenses. Despite what 
may have been said in the past.
And what many will say in a rebut to this post, it will happen if they ever 
go back to making SLR Leicas!

ted