Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/04/14

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Subject: [Leica] Newbie question about frame line accuracy
From: lambroving at worldnet.att.net (William G. Lamb, III)
Date: Thu Apr 14 11:52:30 2005

Scott,

Slow day, eh?! :-)

Feli and Didier gave you some pretty good explanations.

I shoot my 28/2 on a .72 M7 mainly and found the 28mm frame
pretty accurate. Same for the 35mm on my .58 MP where it seems
deadly accurate. The 50/1.4 ASPH I've been shooting on my M5
which has the older, larger frames and this seems quite accurate
at middle distances. I hadn't noticed how inaccurate the 50 mm
frame was on the M7, but as I haven't cropped the top off of
anyone's head recently, I guess it was a non-issue! :-)

Fitting more frames in the v/f makes a lot of sense about any
inaccuracy in the later M's. I wouldn't care to have some delicate
frame zoom mechanism added to my cameras to "fix" this issue.
My gear has the best of care, but IS subject to a lot of bouncing
around, albeit in a well-padded bag, when I travel. Perhaps
Leica used the K.I.S.S. principal regarding this, which is fine by me.

Regards,

William

At 02:15 PM 04/14/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>Thanks. I'm not complaining, I was just curious about the function
>of my beloved new cameras and why this mis-feature I've read about
>might not have been "fixed" in the 50 years of Leica development.
>
>Scott
>
>William G. Lamb, III wrote:
>
>>
>>Scott,
>>
>>Everything's a compromise. Depends on which M and
>>magnification and which focal length. Usually, at least,
>>you get a bit more than you thought, which isn't horrible.
>>
>>If that's a .72 M6ttl you are using, 28 and 35 frames are
>>pretty accurate at 2 - 5 m., 50mm less so, etc.
>>
>>What is your complaint? Even SLR's are not perfect in this
>>regard. Are you shooting reversal?
>>
>>William
>>
>>At 01:21 PM 04/14/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>>
>>>Why aren't the framelines in the M's (I have a TTL) very
>>>accurate for framing?  Is there some special technical challenge
>>>involved?
>>>
>>>Scott