Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/03/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 02:06 PM 3/29/98 +0100, you wrote: >The truth is, it's not a trend (Leica is completely disable to create >one), it's Leica's inability to do better. Maybe sometime a 97% >viewfinder is enough, maybe sometime a simple thing fullfils the needs. >In most respects Leica just couln't keep up with the rest. And this is >not a trend but a tradition with them. Oh, baloney. (Salami?) :-) The 100 per cent vs. 92 per cent viewfinder issue has always been around. The difficulty of producing a 100 per cent viewfinder, and the lack of any real reason to have one is the main reason. 35mm photography is dynamic, and fast moving. Wasting time worrying about a tiny bit on the edges is not that big a deal. Otherwise, why are there only three cameras in the world that are 100 per cent? Hassleblad? Rollei 8008? Don't know, but I doubt it. If I was doing precision copy work, that would be an important issue. If you ask me, it's just for bragging rights at Nikon, Canon, Contax - like a 1200-1700 Nikon, or 1200 Canon that each cost somewhere around a hundred grand. Sales? Right. Especially since it is from the days when slides were truly king in the professional market, and 100 per cent viewfinders gave you more than what shows up inside the slide mount. Leica doesn't want to keep up. They want to go their own way, and they make the compromises where they are important to keep the price of their cameras down to the level they can live with. The R8 is quite the state of the art body. 3D Matrix RGB metering? That's less than two years old. Leica takes longer than that to add any technology. Leave it up to them to put it in a future camera, if it really pans out. I think it's a great feature. The only thing the R8 isn't state of the art is it lacks AF. Many people think that's great. I have yet to miss AF all that much. Check the baseball picture I just put on my web page (sports section). Not only was it taken without AF, it was taken without a motor drive or winder! ========== Eric Welch St. Joseph, MO http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch The gene pool could use a little chlorine.