Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/03/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]B.D. wrote: >Dan - > >While I'm sold on the Leica Ms and believe that they're the best cameras for me - if for no other reason than that my aging eye does much better with a range finder than with a reflex - and that the lenses are spectacular, I'd suggest that you put an F5 through its considerable paces before you write off some of its amazing performance as advertising hype. > >My son, who is finally graduating from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts seems to have become a skateboarding photographer - don't say it - and shoots with an F5, an F3, and multiple flashes. The metering, both flash and available light, on the F5 truly has to be seen to be believed. I saw what he could do with the F3, and now see the results with the F5, and the diferences aren't advertising hype. The combining of available light and flash are mind-blowing. And the speed and accuracy of the autofocus on the F5 is far beyond that on, say, the N90. As to comparisons of the new 80-200 f 2.8 Nikon Zoom and the R zoom, it may well be that the Leitz lens is technically better, but having seen what the Nikon can do, I would guess anyone would be extremely hard pressed to find any real-world improvement in the results obtained with the Leitz. > >None of which is to say that I'd give up my M6 and lug around his pile of bricks... > >B.D. At least, this is a honest opinion! It sounds true and I'm sure it is. Everything on the Nikons is not advertising hype and everything is absolutely necessary. There are some fancy things that might be useless but there should be some features that represent a real improvement. It turns out that the mattrix metering is know recognised as "necessary" or at least useful and this was a Nikon improvement. For me, it's useful at least and what I like with the Nikon I'm using (F801s and mostly F4) is the combining of available light and flash which I was not able to get with other cameras such as Nikon F3, FE2 and FM2 or Leicaflex SL2. I'm professionaly shooting B/W with tungsten and flash at the same time mostly with AI micro Nikkors (scientific photography of experimental setups and experiments. The F4 is great because it makes a good balance between the flash and available light even with old AI lenses. Maybe the R8 would be great (the main trouble is the motor) but It's still too expensive and I won't spend my grants to get such an expensive photographic setup (at least not now). For all other things, I use the Ms that do not have any mattrix metering or even anything (M2 or M4-P!) and I'm happy with them. I don't think Eric quoted this one : When you don't have what you love, you got to love what you have! And Muddy Water would say : 'If you can't get what you ain't, you can't loose what you ain't never had!" Thib. >At 09:53 AM 3/30/98 -0500, you wrote: >>At 08:54 PM 29-03-98 -0600, Eric wrote: >>[snip] >>>helps. What's REALLY cool about this shutter, that makes it better than any >>>other shutter in the world, is that it tells you when it malfunctions. So >>>you don't nuke important film with a bad shutter. Imagine being a National >>>Geographic photographer shooting a world championship boxing match, only to >>>find out he has no pictures? That's a great feature every (electronic) >>>camera should have. >> >>Look, I can imagine all sorts of things. How often have National >>Geographic photographer lost pictures while covering world championship >>boxing matches (NG covers boxing???) due to shutters malfunctioning, and >>how many have been saved because of the new Nikon F5 shutter? I think >>features like this are marketing noise, pure and simple. Nikon has always >>pushed gimicky things like this. 3D matrix metering? Minolta's had it for >>years, just never mentions it in the ads. >> >>Dan C. >> >> >B. D. >