Re: [Leica] Religious experience? Way OT

[Byron Rakitzis <leica@rakitzis.com>]

> First, the Crusades weren't much of a "religious experience". A
> colleague of mine who represented the Vatican Diplomatic Corps in Greece
> said the Greeks still have not forgiven Rome for the sack of
> Constantinople in 1204. (Roman Catholic knights sacked  Greek Orthordox
> Constantinople  as a favor to Constantinople's rival, Venice, for which
> Venice provided ships to assist the crusaders' attack on Egypt.)

My father was telling me the other day that there is a bit of a furor in
Greece about the Pope recreating St. Paul's journey and the compromise
that was reached is that he is not allowed to visit Greece in his official
capacity as Pope, but that he can go as a private individual.

I'm not going to offer any editorial comment here.

> Of course, old reliable doesn't have a pretty aqua case. To me, Mac
> is to EOS number something as PC is to M6.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs that a monstrosity from Redmond could
be compared to the elegance of the M6. There is a very appropriate Dilbert
cartoon, some years old now: the bearded Unix hacker shows up and tells
Dilbert: "here's a quarter son, go buy yourself a real computer".

For those of us who cut their teeth on Unix (or other sophisticated
operating systems) it's frustrating to see the garbage that gets passed
off as software these days on PC's and Macs.

A small case in point: Unix machines have adjusted the time automatically
for Daylight Savings for a long time now. I'm not sure what version of
Unix would have had this, but let's say it was introduced around 1980.
That would not be far off, plus or minus 3 years.

My "modern" Macintosh still needs to be manually updated. I think that
Windows machines now do it automatically, but they very "helpfully"
remind you that the daylight savings change has come up.

If there is something that could compare to an M6, it is a Unix machine
which stays up for months or even years on end, and which performs its
tasks without fuss.

Anyway, I'm sorry about the computer tirade. Let me try for some
Leica content:

I was in Portland a few weeks ago visiting Mark Rabiner's studio. I used
the hated winder, and I didn't think it was so bad.  It's not loud, and
it's not particularly fast, but it gets the job done. I could imagine
using it if I had to shoot roll after roll.  It doesn't rewind the film,
which is a bit of a drag.

The thing is that I am right-eyed so all the accolades heaped upon
winders and rapidwinders don't mean much for me -- I can wind fairly
fast using just my thumb on an M6.

The R8 is another story -- we took a look at that at Camera World and
there is something very funny about the way the film advance is tucked
away. I could really use a winder on this camera.

Okay, and here is my philosophical question of the day to you: why is it
that there is so much brouhaha about the R8 motor, esp. when a winder
already exists? Is it the speed of the film advance that is lacking,
or the speed of the film rewind, or what?!?! I am one of those who could
never figure out what all the fuss was about with the R8 motor.

I'm not trying to start a flamewar here, I really am honestly curious.

Thanks,

Byron.