Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/04/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 10:28 PM 4/1/97 EST, ted wrote: >But those who shoot sports or high action photography rarely if ever relate to >this delay aspect. IMHO. I'm not rying to give anybody a hard time, I just >don't believe that guys who are shooting regularly whether it is Leica, Canon, >Nikon or any other equipment consistently relate to the fact the camera is going >to be 100 milliseconds slower one way or the other. It is a physically >impossible time to register from the end of my finger! I had cited the article Bob Schwalberg wrote in Pop some years back on this, and Ted's point is the one he was making. Bob worked for Leica in the early 1960's when the Nikon F began to take over as the standard professional tool. Leica comforted themselves with the fact that THEY had virtually no delay due to lack of a mirror to get out of the way, and figured professionals would never be able to adapt to the Nikon's ten-times-longer delay. Well, Leica was wrong: pros just changed their shooting style a bit and learned to anticipate the picture so that the delay was accommodated, and did so automatically. This was one of the several points on which Leica completely misjudged the attractiveness of the Nikon to professionals. Admittedly, the single biggest reason was the customer support -- Nikon gave tremendous support at that time to pros, while Leica gave none -- but a mis-reading of the virtues of the SLR, such as they are, was another. Call it Teutonic arrogance (Schwalberg did), but the reality is that professionals in 1955 shot Rollei and Leica and, by 1965, shot Nikon and Hassie. Marc Marc James Small Cha Robh Bas Fir, Gun Ghras Fir! FAX: +540/343-7315