Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I just finished a trip to Arizona with a friend. Took my M6, G2, and Leica Minilux. I basically used the Minilux as a "quick, grab the camera," camera and the M6 and G2 interchangably for some landscape and aircraft photos. By the fourth day of the trip, I got tired of lugging both cameras around my neck. In Tucson, my friend and I planned on spending an afternoon at the Pima Airplane Musuem. I opted for carrying just the G2. Aside from a side trip back to the parking lot to get a fresh battery out of the camera bag in the car, the G2 worked just fine. Except for one time. Pima has an SR-71 Blackbird. For those of you that aren't into this sort of thing, this is the Mach 3+ spyplane. It's made of titanium (just like the G2!) but painted black with a special paint that supposedly absorbs radar. Offically, I think the explanation was that the paint had something to do with heat distribution. Anyway, every time I pointed the G2 at the Blackbird, it flashed the "no focus" symbols in the viewfinder. I don't know if it was the paint absorbing the infrared AF beam, or the angles of the plane deflecting them, but the camera just wouldn't focus on the plane. I had to focus on a pillar of the protective canopy, focus-lock, and move back to the plane. I think my DOF was enough to compensate for any focusing errors, but it was annoying. I'm sure I wouldn't have had this problem with the manual focusing of the M6. I just got the M6 and this trip was sort of a comparison between the two cameras. I love the G2, but I'm getting more comfortable with the M6. I guess if pressed to score the two, I'd rank them about the same...equal in quality, but different in "texture" and feel. One is better at some things than the other, but not quite as good at other things. They seem to compliment each other pretty well. But, for taking photos of the world's fastest airplane, the M6 comes out on top. Pictures will be posted to my web site in a couple days. Three airplane museums and landscapes from around Sedona--most of the landscapes are on Kodachrome, so they'll be on the web site in a week or so. Later, Les http://home.att.net/~lbonser