Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/07/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> The R8 seems very nice but I'm still hung up on mechanical cameras. That's understandable. There's a certain elegance and good sense in having just what you need and no more. Ideally, this pays off in better reliability, too. > Same thing with watches. I got tired of changing batteries all > the time and got a mechanical watch. Now when I get it cleaned and > serviced, it only costs $400 instead of a $3 battery. Go figure. I felt a bit less guilty about buying photo equipment when I discovered that some people pay over $10,000 for a watch. There's a magazine for watch connoiseurs (_Watches_ or something like that). Like some cameras, I lot of the "features" on watches are gimmicks. It's almost a parody to see the clutter amongst the multitude of dials, numbers, and hands on these so-called "tachymetres", especially those advertised with a "jet fighter pilot" theme. I would think the last thing a pilot wants is a watch that's so visually cluttered he can't tell what time it is! The only feature that I've seen as useful on these super expensive watches is an indicator of battery strength. > I can imagine world wide how many kids (adult kids) inherit their father's > (or mom's) Leica equipment and don't know anything about photography. It's sad to see how many people are introduced to photography through a plethora of automated and programmed features and become overwhelmed by it, thinking, for example, that if their camera doesn't have an automatic backlight compensation feature, they can't take the photo. A coworker of mine, an engineer, has this very problem. It's surprisingly difficult to get him to accept that there are just three basic controls you need: focus, aperture, and shutter speed. - -Dave