Pad of Death

T

themerinator

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May 23, 2006
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What is this pad of death everyone is mentioning? My GSN is in the mail, and seeing that I've never played around with an RF before I'm completely clueless as to what this bit of terminology means.
 
I just got mine from another RFF'er yesterday. Hope to get a roll through it this week. The thing is larger than I thought, the lens is huge. Ordered a lens cap. The shutter is quiet. It may drive me nuts that you don't know what the shutter speed is going to be, but we'll see...
 
I definitely know where you're coming from. Not knowing the shutter speed is going to be a bummer. I was also surprised by its size. But I'm excited about it nonetheless. Happy shooting!
 
After using the GSN for a few months, I have to say that not knowing the shutter speed isn't that big of a deal. Forget it, trust the lights and just shoot. The upside of this system over others is how fast it is once you get used to it, imo. It's one less setting to worry about. Not lit, shoot. Great for ambient light candids. Fast focusing, simple, and quiet. Great people shooter at the expense of some control. I pre-meter using the guide lights, and focus quickly and shoot. People often don't even know you took their picture, and it works fine hand-held in any ambient light situation. You can control depth of field using the scale on the lens barrel, so aperture priority is more important than shutter speed anyway to me.

So much better than blinding people with flashes or annoying them with infrared auto assist lights, and canned "say cheese" shots.
 
I've used various Electro35 G series cameras (every model in fact), and they're pretty great. Every once in a while I look at an older photo and think "that must have been ___ lens, it's so sharp and gorgeous" and then realize it's one of my Yashicas. And in the 3 or 4 G series cameras I've used a lot (which I bought cheap), none has had this "pad of death" thing. I know it exists, but it's not as common as you're anxious about. I've bought many of these cameras and cleaned them up for friends (they're that much fun), and none of them had that problem. Maybe I'm lucky, but I think it's easy to see an identified problem and worry that it affects all used models. Hopefully you're not paying much for it--you shouldn't.
 
Since I bought mine (september 2005) the GS(T)N became my everyday camera for many of the reasons posted before.
Lens is fast and sharp, body handles well, and most important, it´s quiet!

You won´t regret having one.

Ernesto
 
Yeah, you can sort of control the shutter with your aperture settings, just go to the extreme one way or the other, and back off from the arrow at either side.

Does anyone know what the meter covers, is it averaging? or center weighted?
 
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