Re: [Leica] Useful camera features?

[Shawn London <srlondon@ibm.net>]

- --Doug Herr wrote:
>Why is a mechanical, non-motorized camera with a dumb spot meter
>like the Leica M6 considered by many to be the pinnacle of rangefinder
>design, yet to be competitive a 35mm SLR must have multiple metering
>and program modes, motorized film advance and rewind, auto-bracketing,
>sophisticated flash functions and (in many opinions) several auto
>focus modes?<<

The reason the M6 is considered a successful design is that many 
photographers believe that its so-called primitive features are dynamite 
in the hands of a skilled photographer.  

I think that the greater issue here is that the features listed above are 
what the marketing departments of large manufacturers like Nikon want you 
believe that you really need so they have an excuse to sell their cameras 
for $2800 and justify why you have to upgrade to the F6 for $3500 in five 
years.

This is similar to the productivity debate surrounding computers.  While 
on a basic level computers are a time saving device, adding a larger 
monitor or a faster CPU does not make a big impact beyond that original 
savings.  In the same manner, autobracketing, for instance, is a feature 
of convenience, not necessity, which does not really improve your 
photography.

It helps to keep things in perspective by remembering that "greats" like 
Cartier-Bresson, Capa and so forth did their best work without the luxury 
of even TTL metering.