Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/10/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The M7, M6, M5, M8, M9 and all the other M variants know nothing about the FL of the lens you have attached. They are all pretty dumb metering systems that have a fixed area of the "negative" that they meter. On all but the M8 and M9, that is a circle of diameter 2/3 the height of the frame...... always 2/3 of the height..... Use a 18mm and it is 2/3 of that height, use a 135, and it is 2/3 of that height. So the metering "pattern" never changes, but the covered area of the meter does change because you have lenses that cover different angles of view. Clear? BTW, all M's before the M8 were spot metering ...... but the spot was pretty big! The M8 and M9 have slightly more complicated metering "zones" but the same theory goes here too.... change lenses and the meter sees different things....but the same pattern and the same relative size compared to the negative/sensor. As you might guess, this is about 1975 metering technology, but it still works, as long as you keep your head about you and meter the important parts of a scene appropriately.....don't expect the camera to figure out your scene is 99% bright sky, but you want the cute girl's head to be metered appropriately... it won't be. As a paraphrase to the Wizard of Oz..... This is not Nikon M3 land ..... Frank Filippone red735i at earthlink.net