RE: [Leica] How to support Leica?

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

> You are making the mind boggling statement that the M6 is a
> more expensive
> camera because it is less of a high tech value.
> You stand in front of a tree with your F5 and I'll stand in
> front of it with my
> M6 and ASPH glass and lets both make 16 by 20s and see who's
> got the value. Or
> smaller even. Let's both go into tricky situations which
> involve much tact and
> see whose equipment does better for them. For all it's modes
> and micromotors the
> F5 is a clunker next to the M6. The M6 is a technology of
> tradition and proven
> trial and error decades long tweaking. My Nikon autofocus
> system bores me. It
> collects dust. The batteries are leaking through the camera
> and seeping through
> the floorboards of my house. I just like the way the film
> rewinds itself back
> into the cassette. That makes me smile.
> Mark Rabiner
> I have a winder for my m6. I know what my work looks like now
> and what my work
> looked like before when I used to use Nikons. Does a camera
> which takes worse
> pictures than mine have more value because it has more gee
> wiz stuff in it?
>
Mark - First off, I don't own an  F5 - I own an F with a manual 180 2.8 lens
(and just traded my recently purchased Nikkor 85 1.4 - along an older
Summicron 50 and a 90 for a mint Summilux 75 :-) ). And I don't own an F5
for a couple of reasons: first, I have little or no use for most of its
technological wizardry; second, I don't want a camera as heavy and bulky as
an F5; third, I use a reflex only as a platform for a long lens or two, and
that makes it difficult to justify such an expensive platform. Like you, I
value, no, I treasure, the quiet, compactness, dependability, and superb
glass afforded me with the M. I also prefer viewing the world through a
bright plateglass window with frame lines drawn on it to viewing it through
a lens whose diaphragm only opens to f 2.8 or so.

But - my son, on the other had, who primarily shoots skateboarders doing
their thing, makes great use of the high shutter speeds, high sync speeds,
various metering capabilities, autofocus, myriad flash posibilities, and
motor drive of the F5. I am amazed at what he can do with that camera. And
whether or not a 16x20 of a tree would be a bit sharper taken with a 35
Summliux ASPH than it would be taken with an F5 and 35 1.4 has little or
nothing to do with the value of that F5 to my son. There really is more to
cameras, and photography, than lens resolving power.

I love the M. You love the M. We both swear by it. The difference between
us, I guess, is that I feel that because a camera like the F5 offers the
photographer so many technological options, the F5 is a better value for the
photographer who is going to avail him or herself of those options.

B. D.