Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/03/05
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César Bernardo wrote:
> Have noticed
> that they are cheap second-hand. Is there any particular reason for this ?
> I want buy a Leica, i`m in love.
The advice that everyone seems to be echoing is good: stay away from early R4
bodies with serial numbers below 16xxxxxx. The older bodies are notorious for
electronics failure and, apparently, have wire-wrap board instead of the
printed circuit board found in later models. Since the bodies are quite old,
you should also be looking for light seal degradation, shutter malfunction,
len aperture malfunction, etc. The following link may be useful:
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/Leica
The link is to a site run by an ex-Leitz technician in the UK and used to
have pages of faults to look out for when buying R bodies second-hand.
Unfortunately, the server is blocked by the proxy server here so I can't
verify if the pages are still there.
> I `m going sell my Canon EOS 50 and the
> Flash Metz 32-mz to buy the leica.
Hmmmm. I've been shooting Leica for a number of years now and I can't say it
has necessarily been a good experience: even though the R4 bodies may be
cheap, a second-hand lens, at least in Australia, will be double that of a
newer Nikon/Canon professional-range equivalent. The quality difference is
debatable: the lenses are different but whether they will be better for your
style of work is another matter.
Style is an important consideration, I think: R bodies don't have the
technological sophistication of Nikon and Canon (even the R8 falls short by a
huge margin) and are therefore relatively useless for modern photojournalism,
weddings, etc. where accurate flash automation is important. The R4 has no
flash metering and it's ambient metering can be easily fooled, especially
using the full-field integrated mode.
On the other end of the scale, it doesn't have any of the benefits of a
medium-format system when doing studio work - in many instances,
medium-format systems can be cheaper! For example, compared to my Mamiya 645
system, the Leica is smaller but much more expensive and heavier but doesn't
have removable film-backs, the ability to shoot Polaroids or a waist-level
finder.
Having said all this, I am persisting with Leica since I never use auto-focus
(even when I'm shooting with my Nikon), seldom use exposure automation, have
a few Leica lenses that I'm quite fond of, have some liking for the build
quality and, most importantly, I know the equipment very well. It's good to
have equipment that isn't cluttered with unused functionality and it would
take me a while to refamiliarise myself with another system to the same
extent.
I think that perhaps another reason is that I have other systems that will
fill in the gaps when the Leica isn't adequate so -- you may want to
reconsider selling the EOS! :-)
- --
Kevin Leong
Telstra Intelligent Network Platforms
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