Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/10/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>How does one go manual with f-stops and shutter speed? Menu fiddling or? > >CZ >NC I'd call it about midway between the fiddling that most digicams require and the convenience of being able to quickly spin dials on an M. This cam has a JOYSTICK, which you use with your right thumb to control stuff you'd like to control, including focus, f-stop, shutter speed, white balance, ISO, RAW/Tiff/JPG...it feels pretty reasonable to use. (This is in addition to the four little buttons that all digicams seem to have. For manual control, you spin the mode dial on the top of the camera to "M" and then at the bottom of the screen you see "F2.8 1/50" or whatever. The shutter speed is highlighted and you adjust it by moving the joystick up or down. You move the joystick left to highlight the f-stop, and then move the joystick up or down to adjust. If you half-press the shutter at this point, you'll get a bar showing how far off your settings are from the camera meter (-2 to +2 stops). There's also a live histogram. That's it. Pretty nice to use, except you can't instantly spin from f/16 to f/4, like with most bigger cameras. To use manual focus, you slide a switch on the lens barrel (!) to MF and then use the joystick left/right to select between "F2.8 1/50 MF" and, again, push the joystick up or down to change focus. While adjusting focus manually, the center of the screen is enlarged and the right of the screen shows a bar with numbers indicating distance in meters or feet going from minimum focus to infinity. The distance range currently within the DOF (based on focus, focal length, f-stop) is colored yellow for scale focusing. I imagine I'll mostly use the program mode (with the nice AE and/or AF lock button that does _not_ need to be held down to keep the setting) for snaps, but when I try this for street shooting, I won't hesitate to switch to all manual/scale focus, and just snap away until the light changes. It's pretty responsive on all manual. I'm planning to go the NC State Fair tomorrow...we'll see how it goes... -Aaron