[Leica] The Leica M8.2 Experience

[drodgers at casefarms.com (David Rodgers)]

Richard wrote:

>>Just the right functionality to do the job at hand simply, elegantly,

and at minimal cost, sums the concept up for me.  The M3 had it in  
spades.  The D700 almost has it and would if it were less complex  
functionally, the GRD2 has it too.<<

Funny you should mention the D700 functionality. I've become so
accustomed to using only the few functions that I need - when using my 3
R lenses -- that everything is amazingly quick and simple. I mainly just
change the ISO. I also have the function button programmed so I can
quickly change the custom lens focal length (28, 50 or 90).  

Everything including WB and exposure are so right on most of the time
that I don't even think about it. Besides, I shoot RAW and can adjust WB
later. Sometimes, though it's rare, I'll adjust exposure compensation,
or bracket. It's getting so I know when the exposure might be fooled
(even before I chimp). 

The camera uses average weighted or spot metering with non CPU lenses.
It doesn't call on a group of mathematicians to calculate exposure. More
like one guy using a slide rule. Yet he seems to know what he's doing. 

There's something to be said for simplicity. All the stuff that I don't
use I don't miss. I call it the reverse 80286 effect. Back in the early
80's I was content with my IBM 8086 PC. Then I got an 80286 machine and
I didn't know how I survived before. Eventually I was never satisfied
with existing technology, because I always knew that something better
was on the horizon. 

Then I read Brian Geene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos" and I realized that
time doesn't really flow or have direction. Our minds are just fooled
into believing that. Physicists say that all that will happen and all
that has happened currently exists. We just remember the past, can't
remember the future, and we think we're in the present, thus time seems
to have a flow. 

I don't really understand it, but Physicists are the same guy's who
discovered those laws regarding why lenses can't be perfect, and since I
know they're right about that (based on my experience of owning just
about every lens made at one time or another) I give them the benefit of
the doubt on the time thing. 

So I searched for and found a black hole in the bottom of my old
Billingham bag (boy was it dark and empty) and I went back in time. Now
I don't remember autofocus lenses. I can't recall matrix metering. I
don't know what I'm missing. I do, OTOH, enjoy the silky smooth feel of
the manual focus of Leica lenses, which BTW all modern non-Leica lenses
lack; and which seems to support the theory that we in fact might be
going from a state of higher to lower entropy instead of visa versa.   

All those buttons on the D700 are for futurists, which I'm not. I just
love my Leica lenses. FWIW, the 50/2 Summicron, which really acts like a
50 on the D700, is currently my favorite. It's like butter, and on the
D700 it's like a Noctilux. A buttery Noctilux that cost so much less
than the real thing you'd need a slide rule to figure out the savings!

Dave R