Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/08/04

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Subject: Re: The Leica R8 and moving up from Canon
From: dmorton@journalist.co.uk (David Morton)
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 3:50 GMT0

Ben W. Holmes writes:

> As a weird aside, the F3 which is built as a MF body, can be
upgraded
> to AF
> by the addition of the AF prism. I've never seen or held one, but
I've
> read
> about it in several places and have seen the prisms offered for
sale
> (very
> pricey).

I'm not sure this is quite true. The F3AF was a separate model, and
was available with two AF lenses, an 80mm and a 200mm. The body looks
the same, but the prism housing is much bigger. While the AF prism
can be removed from the body like any other F series prism, it's my
understanding that there are electrical contacts between the prism
and the body which are not found on a non-AF F3 body, so you can't
'upgrade' an ordinary F3 to an F3AF. The same applies to the F3P:
superficially it looks as if you could add a hotshoe to an F3 by
putting on an F3P finder, but the body lacks the electrical contacts.

> I missed the beginning of this thread, is the prism on the R8 >
fixed?

Yes, sadly.

> If Leica were to engineer AF for the 8, it would have to be in the
> lenses.

Or in the body, like the Contax AX, although Dr Johnson's comment
about the dog applies to that little nightmare...