Re: M use

[Gerard Captijn <captyng@vtx.ch>]

At 11:11 PM 20/07/1997 +0800, you wrote:
>
>Today, I found myself being able to focus by touch of the lens alone. It
>was one of those times when I was playing around with my M6, and then I
>decided to test myself, I looked at objects around me, estimated the
>distance in my head, and withoutlooking down at the lens, turned it to what
>I thought would be the correct distance. When I checked with the
>rangefinder, most times I was correct, sometimes I was close. It was an
>unexpected surprise. Perhaps this is an ability that hascome out of much
>use of the camera, and some aspects of handling become automatic responses.
>Did anyone have this kind of experience also?

Not exactly the same thing but an effective  way to speed-up focussing of
Leica-M glass is to have your lenses always set on infinity (takes also
less place in your bag). When you focus, you turn the distance ring until
the 2 images in the finder cover. No back and forth through the point of
focus as with an SLR. After having taken the picture (or the series of
pictures) you set the lens back to infinity. By working like this,
focussing is always a short travel from infinity to focus, always in the
same direction.
This focus drill could cut the time you focus by 50% and result in better
pictures as you diminish the time parrallax between seeing the subject and
exposing the film.

Gerard Captijn.