Something a little wierd at Amazon

[parisian]

Just over a year ago I posted this;

Yesterday a little bookshop in Wordsworth Country sold me 'The Leica Lens Book' by Brian Bower brand new for £4.00. First printed in 1998 and therefore a tad dated but a fascinating read.
'Had it on the shelf for ages' said the owner, 'Since they stopped making film, nobody is interested'
Ho hum.

Browsing Amazon this evening I found this
Either my eyes have gone or I (for once) bagged a bargain

[TimF]

I hope you put the bookseller right on that score Peter!

It would certainly seem a bargain at that price, though I reckon the two in excess of £150 are trying it on more than anything else. See here for Abebooks.

[TimF]

The other week I snagged a copy of "Photography with a Leica" by a seemingly forgotten British tog, J Allan Cash at our local s/h dealer.

[parisian]

The Jacket price was £30 and I assumed he had made a mistake until he gave me his considered opinion. I did attempt to put him right (after the sale) but he was convinced in his argument.
I hope you got yours reasonably?

[TimF]

A tenner, which seems reasonable judging by Abebooks.

[parisian]

Good morning Tim. Excellent price
Just slightly off topic, you have mentioned using your 'R' glass with Canon bodies. Obviously all manual metering and focus but how do you manage with the focus thing. I find manual focus on the D2x abysmal to be honest and although I have seen 'R' to Nikon adaptors at Ffordes I am not sure that I could use them.
It is a tantalising prospect however.

[huwevans]

I find manual focus on the D2x abysmal to be honest and although I have seen 'R' to Nikon adaptors at Ffordes I am not sure that I could use them.

Come on, Baggy, get with the beat! Stop pussyfooting about and get one of these. It will totally transform your D2X for manual focusing. You know it makes sense.

[Clive]

I rely on the electronic rangefinder, especially with the 50/1.2 at full aperture. But I also fire off a few when hand-held as a sort of bracketing for focus. But generally speaking I'm much happier with MF lenses than AF.

[huwevans]

Well, yes, you can do that easily enough sometimes - but I often find it difficult to hold a focus area on the required target and see the green indicators clearly at the same time. If I take my eye off the focus area to look at the indicators I can move off the target area too easily. If only Nikon would make the bl**dy central dot indicating correct focus red instead of green so that it would stand out in peripheral vision from all the other information (like the flash indicator) I'd be happier.

But, even so, I do find something very satisfying about being able manually and visually to confirm focus with a traditional split-image rangefinder spot. AF (however well it might work) just doesn't do that for me.

[TimF]

Just slightly off topic, you have mentioned using your 'R' glass with Canon bodies. Obviously all manual metering and focus but how do you manage with the focus thing. I find manual focus on the D2x abysmal to be honest and although I have seen 'R' to Nikon adaptors at Ffordes I am not sure that I could use them.
It is a tantalising prospect however.

The smug answer would be that would be telling Peter! As yet I don't have a Canon body, and may have a rethink (again). Hit a snag today. I went down to visit Richard Caplan in Piccadilly today, to view a Leica 35-70mm f/2.8 Vario-Elmarit-R - a vanishingly rare lens. Anyhow, it unfortunately has a basket-like baffle on the back to protect the rear element, which sticks out too far for any Canon body I should think; even the 1.6 crop ones. I suppose it might be possible to remove the thing, but it would be necessary to remember never to zoom the lens out past the 40mm mark, or it'd be sickening crunch time. [img]/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

The lens itself is a thing of beauty, so I now need to consider whether it's worth laying out a hefty sum on something which might only be usable on a film camera (there'd be no guarantee of it being OK on a future R10 of course), or shelling out a further hefty sum on a DMR (which still goes for not much under it's new price, almost uniquely for digital models of that age) which is of course 'old technology' now, or looking for another DSLR. The Zeiss 24-70mm for the Sony cameras is possibly the only standard zoom which would match this one I reckon, with the Nikon in close second.

The problem with opting for a Nikon body is that any R lenses that might be usable would need a mount change. This can be done - eg, Leitax, but not for all. Another option, which I don't know whether anyone has explored it is to make adapters to put Leica R glass on Sony Alpha cameras. The R series flange to focal plane distance is a generous 47mm, which does give breathing room on some other systems, though not Nikon, as we've seen - their F to FP is 46.5mm.

Canon's is 44mm (the most useful along with the Olympus 4/3rds), but the Sony/Minolta distance is a handy 44.5mm, which suggests the possibility of doing something.

[Benchista]

I do use my Summicron-R on my EOS 5D. Personally, I don't have a problem focusing it. It's the only R lens I have, but I use my Zeiss for Contax and Rollei QBM lenses fairly often, too.

[parisian]

The problem with opting for a Nikon body is that any R lenses that might be usable would need a mount change. This can be done - eg, Leitax, but not for all

Well the Leitax wouldn't do for me Tim and I cannot understand how Ffordes were advertising a Nikon adaptor alongside the EOS one at £79 if memory serves. It disappeared after a week or two and I assumed they had sold out. Perhaps they never existed and it was a simple mistake.
The DMR would perhaps be a step too far although, as you state, they do seem to be holding their price rather well. I don't think they were inherently bad - simply overpriced (and overwhelmed) compared to Nikon and Canon submissions in the great pixel race. Maybe the quality of the back and the attached glass is what is holding the price unnaturally high.
I'm sorry I thought you had a Canon body in stock to glue the R glass onto. My mistake

If only Nikon would make the bl**dy central dot indicating correct focus red instead of green so that it would stand out in peripheral vision from all the other information (like the flash indicator) I'd be happier

I might be missing something here Huw but while the exposure information (D2x)etc. along the bottom of the viewfinder is indeed green all my focus confirmation points are red
I will look again at the Katzeye but I still think that this should be standard on DSLR's which, as I have stated before have been downgraded from the days of film.

[TimF]

I did ask on GetDPI about the possibilities of using R lenses on the Sony, but it seems, according to the small amount of feedback so far that a mount change is needed there too; due mainly to the large girth of the Leica lenses or something. I'm not aware of any after-market mounts though (which is unusual in itself), but a DPR thread suggest the only option is cannibalisation of dead Minolta-mount lenses.

There's a thread on GetDPI about converting Leica to Nikon here which is certainly interesting. The relevant conversion kits have currently sold out at Leitax, so there's obviously a demand out there.

[nspur]

Just slightly off topic, you have mentioned using your 'R' glass with Canon bodies. Obviously all manual metering and focus but how do you manage with the focus thing.

I do use my Summicron-R with my Canon 5D but not as often as my Elmarit-R 90/f2.8. I don't have a problem focusing despite the rather unhelpful screen. These are my only R lenses; I wish I culd afford more.

[huwevans]

I might be missing something here Huw but while the exposure information (D2x)etc. along the bottom of the viewfinder is indeed green all my focus confirmation points are red .

I think you're referring to the square brackets overlayed on the frame area - they don't give focus confirmation (unless there's some custom setting I've badly missed in the user manual), but only indicate which areas are active. They will briefly flash red to show which are active when you half press the release or press the AF-On button, but they don't give any indication that focus lock has been achieved. So in particular, with a manual focus lens, they don't tell you if the AF system thinks the lens is focussed or not. You have to look at the green indicators at the bottom, to the left of the other vf information, to see that.

I will look again at the Katzeye but I still think that this should be standard on DSLR's which, as I have stated before have been downgraded from the days of film.

Well, I can see the case for not fitting them as standard - arguably they interfere with the view, and since the cameras are designed as AF cameras it would seem strange to inflict such a detriment on all users, indiscriminately. However, I cannot understand why they aren't at least offered as an optional extra, as other screen types are, and always have been. That makes no sense to me at all. Perhaps it's a marketing thing - the mfr, after all, really wants you to buy his brand new AF lenses, rather than using old manual ones, for which he receives no further revenue. And perhaps even offering the screen might be perceived as a tacit admission that the AF system wasn't all that users could possibly want, thus potentially damaging the brand image - a Gerald Ratner-style own-goal (if a little more subtle). Well, I don't know - I'm just speculating.

I do recall reading something to the effect that aspects of the design necessary for the AF system (by which I can only guess was meant the LCD system which handles the overlayed AF area markers, and the red flashing referred to earlier) meant that there simply wasn't the required room for things like the split-image spot. But the mere existence of third party screens like the Katzeye would seem to give the lie to that. OTOH, the Nikon DSLR screens are extremely thin - much, much thinner than any manual focus screen I've handled. And whilst I do find the Katzeye works pretty well (and much, much more satisfactorily for me than relying on the AF indicators), I have also always felt that it wasn't quite as easy to use as a traditional screen actually designed for manual focus cameras - i.e. like any of the ones in my earlier Nikon 35mm bodies.

I've never been quite sure whether that was a real effect, or just a deceptive impression, possibly caused by the AF area brackets slightly obscuring the view. But I suppose it might be the case that the design is compromised by the reduced depth of the focussing screen, and the camera mfr might prefer not to offer the option at all, than to offer a less effective MF screen than the ones they had been fitting to cameras since the 1950s.

Well, perhaps we'll never know. What I do know is that for about fifty sovs (as it was at the time) I was able to totally transform the manual focusing capability of my D2X (haven't yet bothered putting one on the D2H, but I probably will some day), and became once more a very happy bunny. I figured I was worth it.

[Benchista]

That's all very interesting. The screens for my 5D are of a similar thickness to other interchangeable screens I've used - with the exception of Exacta RTL1000/Praktica VLC screens, which are very much thicker. Personally, I'm happier overall with an AF screen, even for manual focusing, than I would be with a split image screen, and that's without the benefit of the AF confirmation lamp (as you need chipped adaptors for it to work with EOS cameras, and none of my adaptors are so equipped). I can never be bothered to change screens - I prefer to fit and forget, and I prefer a simple gridded screen so as to have the least number of inhibitors to the composition process possible - I always, but always find focusing aids distracting in that way, and thus at best a necessary evil.