Re: [Leica] The M6 Fugue

["A.H.SCHMIDT" <horsts@primus.com.au>]

Dave Richards wrote:

> If I may kick in my two cents worth, you seem to equating ever-increasing
> automation with progress.  Automation has it's place.  After all, email
> would be pretty difficult in a world that considers the postage stamp the
> height of technological enlightenment.  But it also has it's price.
>
> I submit that the fully manual camera offers something that the fully
> automatic camera cannot, and that is the ability to look at a subject and
> decide for yourself how it should be photographed, without reliance on wat
> an engineer or programmer considers an acceptable exposure most of the time.
>
> When I moved to Leica I gave up the convenience of an automatic Nikon.
> Except that Nikon lenses are visibly inferior to Leica optics, the N90 is
> considerably more convenient, and best of all, can rip through a
> 36-exposure roll of Kodachrome in less than 8 second.  But my M6 has made
> me think, which is more than I have been able to say about a Nikon since I
> sold my Nikkormat FTN.
>
> Dave

Dave, If you really think about it, your fully manual M6 isn't really fully
manual at all.

Firstly, when you set your exposure, what do you do? Do you have a guess how
bright it is?
Not really, you use your automatic exposure meter and do what it tells you. OK,
you say:
"Yes, but I can then alter the exposure if i don't agree with it." Exactly the
same happens if you have an automatic exposure setting in your camera. All the
light meter does, is to set the
shutter speed, for example, where you would have set it to. And if you don't
agree with it (like before), you cane use your + or - exposure compensation or
set it manual if you like.

However in 95% you'll find, the automatic exposure control will do exactly the
same as you would have done. The other 5%, it is up to you to set it to what you
prefer, or think it is more appropriate. After all why should an exposure meter,
that drives some automatic be less accurate then the same meter having to be
read by you?.

I don't think it would be wise, to have a M6 with automatic, but then a M7 will
do.

I bet you, if it came to the crunch, people would by the M7 too. Especially, if
, as many people seem to prefer, the flash synch speed is faster at the same
time.

If you look at it in a practical situation. Say you photograph a landscape, or a
group of people in the open. It is a cloudy sky. The clouds are broken up and
reasonably fast moving.  You get from one moment a bright and then a cloudy sky
and then bright again and so on. All the automatic will do, is to change the
(say) shutter speed up or down, exactly what you would do, only you could keep
the camera at your eye and didn't have to twiddle the shutter speed dial and
compare a couple of LED's in the few finder. I would say, you
could concentrate more on what you are supposed to be photographing.

A couple of years ago, I took a trip in Switzerland with the Glacier Express
Train from  Zermat to St. Moritz. My son had my old  SL2 I had given him. I had
my  Pentax Super-A
on this trip.  We made pictures all the way,  hanging out of the window.
When it was all over, back in Australia, we had a look at our prints. My son had
about a 70% success rate (Exposure wise) and I had 100% correct exposures. Why?
My camera was set to shutter priority I set it to 1/250sec. . His of course was
fully manual.  Now during the trip, the weather was variable, we drove through
short cuttings, through forests. over and under bridges. In other words, the
light situation changed quite often rapidly.
The automatic to care of this. Even if I wanted to, I would not have had the
time to measure, think and then set the right exposure in all cases.

I believe, there is nothing wrong, with some automation, as long as one cane see
in the view finder what's going on, and as long as it can be switched to manual
if required.

This does in no way take the creativity or the thinking away from the
photographer. You can always supervise what's happening.

I am looking forward to a M7 with aperture priority, a LCD display in the
viewfinder
and a separate meter on-off switch.
Then  a M8 with fully automatic exposure control, settable to program, aperture
and shutter priority and manual control.

Regards, Horst Schmidt