[Leica] BESSA R3A or M7

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Rick responded to:
> Luis Ripoll wrote:
>> I own a MP and M6, personally I'm not enthusiastic with the Automatic
>> priority of the M7, ...<<<<<<

Rick said:
> Me neither.  Though, I've never tried it.  :-)
>
> We had a big yack about the value of incident meters being the ants pants 
> a second ago, in relation photographing differing skin colours.  Various 
> folks pointed to the advantages of assessing the light by some method that 
> is independent of the actual subject being shot.  So where is the 
> advantage of an M7, with aperture priority automatic mode, and highly 
> reactive to the subject?
>
> I'd prefer to set my meter for light that I just know, or, meter off a mid 
> tone somewhere and then shoot till I need to re-assess.  An M7 on auto 
> would not work this way.  Nor would I stay as mindful of what the light is 
> up to.
>
> But then I see that many love the M7.  Perhaps I should try one.  :-)

Hi Rick,
As you know I use 3 M7's, 99.9% of the time on AE lock. Colour of skin, 
background, front ground whatever and I bang away only concerned with the 
focus and action happening with nary a thought about exposure. And I must 
say I've never had so many exposures perfect for printing with almost the 
exact printing exposure time as we've had since using the M7's on AE.

I know the exposure is read off that little white circle on the shutter 
curtain, well all I can say is, whatever the hell else it does it must be 
magic because it eliminates "exposure concerns" and leaves one for complete 
concentration on the subject and focus, action.

If you haven't tried one, you will be very surprised how accurate they are 
at doing whatever it is they do. Roll after roll, like in the hundreds of 
rolls, as in thousands of exposures. :-)

If a person is using an M7 and having problems with not trusting the AE 
exposure lock, then there are other influences causing the exposure 
problems. The photographer's ability in handling the camera, not trusting 
the meter and over riding the exposure, therefore screwing up what would've 
been a correct exposure or wildly possible the camera is malfunctioning.

I wouldn't trade mine off for anything as they've sure made life much easier 
in the darkroom and scanned to screen!

ted