Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/03/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Dan - While I'm sold on the Leica Ms and believe that they're the best cameras for me - if for no other reason than that my aging eye does much better with a range finder than with a reflex - and that the lenses are spectacular, I'd suggest that you put an F5 through its considerable paces before you write off some of its amazing performance as advertising hype. My son, who is <underline>finally</underline> graduating from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts seems to have become a skateboarding photographer - don't say it - and shoots with an F5, an F3, and multiple flashes. The metering, both flash and available light, on the F5 truly has to be seen to be believed. I saw what he could do with the F3, and now see the results with the F5, and the diferences aren't advertising hype. The combining of available light and flash are mind-blowing. And the speed and accuracy of the autofocus on the F5 is far beyond that on, say, the N90. As to comparisons of the new 80-200 f 2.8 Nikon Zoom and the R zoom, it may well be that the Leitz lens is technically better, but having seen what the Nikon can do, I would guess anyone would be extremely hard pressed to find any real-world improvement in the results obtained with the Leitz. None of which is to say that I'd give up my M6 and lug around his pile of bricks... B.D. At 09:53 AM 3/30/98 -0500, you wrote: >At 08:54 PM 29-03-98 -0600, Eric wrote: >[snip] >>helps. What's REALLY cool about this shutter, that makes it better than any >>other shutter in the world, is that it tells you when it malfunctions. So >>you don't nuke important film with a bad shutter. Imagine being a National >>Geographic photographer shooting a world championship boxing match, only to >>find out he has no pictures? That's a great feature every (electronic) >>camera should have. > >Look, I can imagine all sorts of things. How often have National >Geographic photographer lost pictures while covering world championship >boxing matches (NG covers boxing???) due to shutters malfunctioning, and >how many have been saved because of the new Nikon F5 shutter? I think >features like this are marketing noise, pure and simple. Nikon has always >pushed gimicky things like this. 3D matrix metering? Minolta's had it for >years, just never mentions it in the ads. > >Dan C. > > <bold><italic><bigger>B. D.</bigger></italic></bold>