Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

In praise of rangefinder Leicas

Six decades of Leica

People criticise Leica for sticking to the M format with rangefinder (left), introduced in 1953 as a successor to the Leica III dating from the 1930s (right), saying it is just something to put in a glass cabinet. The real advantages of a Leica model M in practice apply to both film and digital versions.

(1) It is significantly smaller than an SLR, which means it is not an encumbrance.

(2) You can easily see what you are taking, and also what you are NOT taking, through the direct vision viewfinder, which has a feature to insert an extra eyepiece for those who wear spectacles.

(3) Focussing by rangefinder is positive and the photographer can decide what to focus on.

(4) The hardware is robust.

If digital SLRs are just too big, the problem with compacts is that their ergonomics are poor. Direct vision viewfinders, if fitted at all, are inaccurate and hard to see through. LCDs at the back of the camera are difficult to see in bright sunlight and do not show the image in real time. For anyone over the age of 45, it is necessary to hold the camera at arms' length to see the viewfinder, which is not a position where the camera can be held steady. And - a detail, but an important one - lenses are not provided with a thread for a UV filter, the main function of which is to keep the lens clean; dust etc can be removed by removing the filter and washing it under the tap.

Why the manufacturers have not addressed these simple points is a bit of a mystery because anyone bringing out a camera that did would have a best-seller.

Kommentarer

Skicka en kommentar

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

Battery trains fool’s gold

A piece by the railway news video Green Signals recently reported the fast charging trials for battery operated electric trains on the West Ealing to Greenford branch, in west London. In a comment under the video, I described the project as technological overkill, bearing in mind that before dieselisation in the 1960s it was worked by the tiny steam locomotives of the Great Western 1400 class, a 1932 design based on an 1870s design. The money that has been spent on the experiment would have paid for a small fleet of the old things. Elsewhere in the comments, I was critical of the 800 series trains. This produced a response from the makers of the video, as follows. “I may be grasping at straws here but I am guessing you don't like 8xx series trains all that much and rather wish we still had Kings, Castles and (for the branches) 14xx's. Fair? ” My reply was as follows... Yes you are grasping at straws. The model for long distance stock is the class 180, which is a 23 metre veh...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer