Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/04/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Thu, Apr 24, 1997 9:35 PM, Ted Grant wrote: >The R8 is brighter without question against the R7 in the image you are looking >at to photograph. And we did a test with a brand new Canon EOS1n and the R8 and >with identical apeture lenses and the R8 was hands down on the Canon for >brightness. This may or may not have anything to do with it, but Minolta seems to have improved their Accu-Matte viewscreen technology, and the "D-type" screen that I tried out on a Hasselblad did seem wonderfully bright and easy to focus. I've had similarly good luck with Beattie Intenscreens, versions of which are no doubt available for older R-series cameras. At the time, I didn't have a spot meter or any means of measuring viewscreen brightness, but if I had to guess, I'd say that the Beattie screen was at least a couple of stops brighter than a normal acrylic screen. And for historical interest, I've been able to measure the difference in brightness between an old-fashioned (circa 1966) ground glass + fresnel screen versus a late '80s acrylic (not sold as bright-anything), and found the acrylic to have far more even illumination, and to be anywhere from 1-1-1/2 stops brighter, depending on what part of the screen was being measured. I do not especially favor screens with microprism or split-image anything, and in any event, the modern, bright, viewscreen should very clearly reveal images "snapping into focus", far more so than lesser screens. Just a suggestion from the low-income portion of the Leicaphile spectrum :-) Jeff