[Leica] Screw this ('n'that)

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

Dennis: >>>Loading, rewinding, etc, etc, not really bad when you get
used to it.
Granted we are talking a user-shooter, not a pro out to return with the
bread and butter.

Lens? I prefer an f/2 capable but the old collapsed f3.5 Elmar sure
makes a compact package.  Yes, the Summitar and Summicron collapse but
not nearly so flush as the Elmar.

Just do it Mike ;) and tell all about it.<<<


Yesterday I went by to my formerly local camera emporium, Oak Park
Camera (now owned by Helix) which used to be around the corner from
where I lived and now is 60 miles away, and played with a "Barnack
camera" for only the second time. Two things that struck me: one, that
in a strange way I LIKE the double-windows, and two, that one thing I
miss about the M4 and collapsible Summicron I used for a while is simply
that my hands like to have something to fidget with. You know what they
say about smokers? That one of the things that "addicts" them to smoking
is that their hands like fiddling with the smoking paraphenalia? Well,
I'm a reformed smoker, and I do like having something to do with my
hands. The knob wind and all the knobs'n'buttons are perfectly
comfortable.

I like the "de-magnified" viewer, in an odd way. Focusing intrudes
itself on viewing in almost all cameras. In SLRs, you are always looking
through a lens ***at its maximum aperture*** which is not, contrary to
the conventional wisdom, strictly WYSIWYG--the all-in-focus M viewfinder
is perhaps more true to the f/8 and f/11 apertures you'd be using in
daylight. Even with the M you are distracted by multiple framelines,
those tyrannical little LEDs, and the focusing patch. It's strangely
refreshing to set the focus and then dismiss it, seeing nothing but the
image to be photographed floating amidst blackness.

One could argue that the G2 does as much, except in that case you are
perpetually unsure about focus.

Of course, I *want* a screwmount camera, and over the years I've gotten
very adept at talking mysef into admiring things I want. So maybe all
this is not evaluation, but a not-very-sophisticated form of
rationalization. <s>

- --Mike