Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/07/02

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Leica technology, creative control
From: TM <spaniel@pacbell.net>
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 07:13:10 -0700

Absolutely true, Eric! An example: I recently participated in a seminar,
shooting male models. Late in the day, after setting up my N90S on the ARCA
Swiss B1 and taking two pictures in full sun, the N90S shutter button would not
fire the shutter. The adjacent display window was blinking an error sign.
Having never seen that message, I had to go to my Billingham, pull out the N90S
manual, and search for the definition of the error message. The model,
meanwhile, was tired and wanted the shoot to end. So I opted to grab my Gossen
meter, take an incident reading, grab my M6, put it on the B1, quickly set the
aperture, shutter, and hyperfocal distance, then quickly took a dozen pictures
before the model gave up. What a relief! The M6 was a blessing, as always.

Eric Welch wrote:

> At 08:36 AM 7/2/98 +0200, you wrote:
>
> >And the less you HAVE to play with rings and dials, the more the camera
> >is out of the way. That is the advantage of muti zone AF, high end ultra
> >sophisticated matrix metering, high end ultra sophisticated auto-flash
> >mangement and fast motors  ;-)
>
> In practice, that's not the way it works. You have to keep your mind on
> exposure, but with a Leica, it's much easier to just do it and get on. With
> the new whiz-bang cameras you're always thinking "Am I in the right mode
> for this camera? Opps, gotta change modes, oops, reach back there and
> switch focusing zones, no, that's the wrong zone, there, now you notice in
> the background something happening, and want to increase depth of field,
> move focusing point where  you want it, focus, recompose, oops, in the
> wrong mode, now have to go from manual to depth of field mode...change
> custom settings from A to B (on an F5) because focus priority isn't right
> for this kind of picture, on and on...
>
> Yep, that's getting technology out of the way.
>
> Leica.
>
> Meter, set exposure, recompose, focus, snap. It becomes automatic. :-)
>
> You can do that with the other camera, but then why bother with all those
> extra modes?
> --
>
> Eric Welch
> St. Joseph, MO
> http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch
>
> I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.