Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/04/21

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To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: The autofocus Leica M...who cares?
From: Eric Welch <ewelch@gp.magick.net>
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 22:42:57 -0700

At 11:33 PM 4/21/96 -0400, you wrote:

>	Until someone invents a synergistic camera system, a
>	trained human being will likely be faster. Canon's
>	EOS Elan IIe is getting close by determining what
>	portion of the image the photographer's eye is focused
>	on and setting the focus of the lens for that. It even
>	does predictive autofocus! That system's available now.
>	So even if Leica wanted to do something like this,
>	they're playing catch-up.
>

Actually, I find the eye-control focus a problem, because it only covers
three (or is it five) little squares. Canon has a video camera that covers
the whole view screen, but then, the need to focus with video is a lot less
critical than stills. I find my EOS1n is very accurate, and faster than any
human could possibly focus. That's why it's the camera of choice by many
Sports Illustrated Photographers, including John Biever, who is their top
football shooter (and Walter Ioss). 

The thing is, the focus works pretty much like manual focusing. But I won't
go into it since this is a Leica list. It's the tool, and the knowledge how
to use it that makes something work. Just like auto exposure, which is very
handy in many situations, and with my M6, sometimes I wish it had it. But
not very often. But then my job requires me to shoot fast. Most
photographers have the luxury of taking all the time in the world. Even so,
the M6 is very fast. And auto focus with a camera would be like lipstick on
a corpse.

>	OK. Now that we've settled this, let's go take some
>	pictures. Happy shooting!
Eric Welch
Grants Pass Daily Courier