Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/05/11

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Tom Kumagai
From: Eric Welch <ewelch@ponyexpress.net>
Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 18:44:04 -0500

At 09:51 PM 5/11/98 +0900, you wrote:

>BTW, If anybody knows, what are the differences between Leicaflex, Leica
>R3-8?? Also what are the
>    diferences between 1cam and 2cam and 3cam lenses. Are some of these lens
>don't fit on to some
>    of the cameras above??

Well, that's a long subject for sure.

As far as I'm concerned, the SL and SL2 are great cameras, but some of the
newest lenses won't work on them. They are dated, and they don't offer some
features that many of us find useful. Especially 1/250 flash sync, which
for pros who use flash a lot, and fill flash, is very important, and only
available on the R8.

But if you want a bargain camera, and 1/100 is fast enough for flash, R3s
are cheap, the R4sP is great, and the R5, RE, R6, R6.2 are very good
cameras. The R7 is the best of that breed. Stay away from early R4 and R4s
cameras, and especially the R4mot. (These are opinions!) 

And then the R8, though since it's new has a few bugs out there, is a
superb camera. Very nice to use, very accurate meter, built in flash meter,
great mirror up function. A few quirks, like the mode dial that turns too
easy, the meter pattern select lever, which I think it too small, and the
lack of a 4+ fps motor at this point. But the built-in flash meter, and the
matrix meter are great, and I like the viewfinder's brightness. Focusing is
very easy. It's big. Very well built (minus the bugs mentioned, which I'm
sure Leica is fixing) smooth, very Leica-like camera. Should be, they
designed it and build it.

=========

Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO

Some people say that I'm superficial, but that's just on the surface.