[Leica] Leica/Digital - heresy?

[bdcolen at earthlink.net (B. D. Colen)]

While I won't for a second disagree about the ultimate superiority of the 
R8/9 viewfinder, I will say that I have had no problem with autofocus wide 
open with fast lenses - having extensively used both a 28 and 85 1.4 on the 
Nikon F100. The fastest available lens for the E-1 at this point is an f2, 
which has some issues - not related to use wide open, but I've had no 
problems using the 2.8s wide open with autofocus.

But I don't have young, or particularly terrific eyes - I'm 58 in two weeks 
and I wear bifocals - and I find that when I need or want to manually focus 
my DSLR it's easy to do. Again, would as large and bright a viewfinder as 
that in the Rs be nice? Absolutely. But as I said, you get used to the 
alternative pretty quickly.

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org 
[mailto:lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of 
George Lottermoser
Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2004 7:00 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: RE: [Leica] Leica/Digital - heresy?


B. D. Colen8/12/04

>be some initial viewfinder shock. But you do get used to it pretty 
>quickly.

Perhaps if you have young eyes.
Perhaps if you rely on auto-focus.

However, with my eyes and the R8 I can focus almost any lens accurately in 
reasonable light.

Whereas I cannot reliably focus the 10D even with the 80 1.4.

I think that we'd all agree that AF is not reliable at large apertures.

This viewfinder issue, as Doug H. has said more than once, seems rather 
significant to my way of working, at my age. 

And I believe that Nikon and Canon don't really care much about it because 
they believe everyone will want and rely on AF.

Fond regards,

G e o r g e   L o t t e r m o s e r,    imagist?

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