Your manual camera is really shutter priority! Electros - best cameras EVER?

[cmedin]

Nope. I am 100% correct. Unconventional wisdom is often regarded as "weird" until others put aside their biases, have a moment of intellectual honesty, and "see the light". The only place to put a shutter speed setting that is not inconvenient to the extent that you will use your manual camera as a "virtual shutter priority" camera, and accept whatever aperture your camera gives you, is if it's on the lens barrel. You use your manual camera as a shutter priority camera almost every time. You either accept the aperture and "acquiesce" aesthetic control over the most important aspect of the image - the DOF, to the camera; or you're futzing with your shutter settings (unlikely) to get the aperture you want, but by that time, your subject just got on the bus and is 1/2-way to Schenectady already.

No other camera - Leicas, Contaxes, Hexars, Zeissesses, Voigtlander-branded Cosinas... regardless of cost gives you the amount of speed required for "decisive moment capture" in combination with the level of aesthetic control, as a photograhic tool, than the RF+aperture priority design of the Electro series.

Sorry, Nick, you're 100% wrong. I always decide on aperture and fiddle with shutter speed afterwards on my all-manual cameras; on the automagic ones I leave them permanently in aperture priority mode.

PS: it helps to pre-set the aperture and shutter speed for the environment if you want 'action' shots.

PPS: It's certainly faster and easier to change shutter speeds on my Leica gear than flipping the lens towards me so I can see what the aperture's at and adjust it. 🙂

 

[NickTrop]

Sorry, Nick, you're 100% wrong.

Impossible!

As I already mentioned, I declared myself "infallible". What I say is true by virtue of my having said it.

 

[NickTrop]

PS... I received a PM today from someone who, upon reading my thread, delisted their Electro from eBay, which they put up because they had two other cameras. A "high end" RF and a DSLR. My assertions reconfirmed what this person intrinsically knew.

The equation?

Aperture priority + RF + a "beyond good enough but not "the best" in a lens test fast lens (incredible price/performace ratio) = best camera ever made. Hands down, bar none - including pseudo-manual cameras, which are virtual shutter priority cameras.

This person "gets it".

 

[bmattock]

Impossible!

As I already mentioned, I declared myself "infallible". What I say is true by virtue of my having said it.

I will have two of whatever you're drinking. In fact, I may have just done.

Besides, I've just finished doing my taxes. Gruel for all my men!

 

[mhv]

Well, one hopes not, anyway. I was once flattened by Skylab falling on me. I distinctly recall the shadow of the falling laboratory disturbing my metering before I was crushed to death.

When I get crushed by the Skylab, I always plan ahead!

 

[bmattock]

When I get crushed by the Skylab, I always plan ahead!

Showoff! 😎

 

[NickTrop]

I will have two of whatever you're drinking.

Diet Pepsi. Not that I don't indulge in a libation or five or seven from time to time.
--

I'm feeling a little like Galileo trying to convince the church that the world is round.

... like Copernicus when he asserted his heliocentric cosmolog displacing the Earth from the center of the universe.

... like Nobel Prize winner Al Gore trying to convince conservative radio talk show hosts of the reality of climate change.

Now I know how these cats felt.
|
You are all defending your "flat earth" models. I am correct. You are resisting the paradigm shift which is shattering your illusion of truth. Besides, I'm infallible.

 

[bmattock]

Diet Pepsi. Not that I don't indulge in a libation or five or seven from time to time.

My friend Jack is very kind to me.

I'm feeling a little like Galileo trying to convince the church that the world is round.

In your heart, you know it's flat.

http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm

... like Copernicus when he asserted his heliocentric cosmolog displacing the Earth from the center of the universe.

The Earth is not the center of the universe. I am.

Now I know how these cats felt.
|

Yeah, but they were like, sane, and stuff.

 

[Al Patterson]

The Earth is not the center of the universe. I am.

The center of the universe is in fact located in my navel...

Either that, or Washington DC.

 

[NickTrop]

Yeah, but they were like, sane, and stuff.

You are making the fatal mistake of confusing GENIUS - no, make that Wile E. Coyote-level SUPER GENIUS with insanity. The center of the RF universe is....

...not BMattock

... not Al Patterson's navel...

It's...

... the ELECTRO!
|

 

[PhotoMat]

The downside of being better that everyone else is that people tend to assume you're pretentious.

http://www.demotivators.com/viewall.html

 

[jan normandale]

mmmmm mmm mmmm another days aging has made this "cab sauv" even fuller bodied than I thought possible... "Waiter bring me fulsome glass!"

 

[moretto]

You are making the fatal mistake of confusing GENIUS - no, make that Wile E. Coyote-level SUPER GENIUS with insanity. The center of the RF universe is....

...not BMattock

... not Al Patterson's navel...

It's...

... the ELECTRO!
|

Nick, Your posts are the best thing that can happen to a guy who got an Electro two days ago, and has athe first roll of film to develop. So I bought the center of the universe!!! Can't wait to tell my 5000€ canonist DSLR friends to feel free to circle around me. 😎

 

[NickTrop]

The downside of being better that everyone else is that people tend to assume you're pretentious.

http://www.demotivators.com/viewall.html

One never has to worry about being viewed as "pretentious" if you're walking around with a groovy Yashica Electro. (Leica? That's another matter...) In fact, if you are pretentious, a quick cure is to always walk around with an Electro strapped around your neck.

If you want to be even less pretentious, walk around with a Zorki...
|

 

[NickTrop]

Nick, Your posts are the best thing that can happen to a guy who got an Electro two days ago, and has athe first roll of film to develop. So I bought the center of the universe!!! Can't wait to tell my 5000€ canonist DSLR friends to feel free to circle around me. 😎

Here's a quick synopsis of "the rant" by way of analogy:

RF photography requires that the Aperture-Shutter Speed relationship be a master-slave relationship, with the Apeture as master, the shutter speed being the slave. Any RF camera that does not have this relationship built-in to the camera, is intrinsically inferior. Other cameras mentioned on this thread that have aperture-priority as a feature are inferior because:

1. They fail miserably to the Electro in "Price/Performance", with an Electro costing 1/10th as these "system" cameras with negligible, if any, marginal improvement of other camera's lenses in "lens tests" but not in actual use.

2. The other "modes" of these cameras "confuse things" unnecessarily. They're the camera equivalent of "bloatware" with features added just for the sake of adding them, to "oh and ah" the ininformed, to sell product. Aperture-priority is all you need - a requirement, for RF-style photography. Everything else is extraneous.

3. Other older coupled light-meter "manual" cameras (slrs, and rangefinders), are really "virtual shutter priority" cameras by design and are far, far, far slower than the Electro s'so to be "irrelevant". This is because with the Electro, you set the aperture on the lens barrel. The camera figures out the shutter speed, "master-slave"-style. They way is should be, the only way it can be. In virtual shutter-priority so-called "manual" cameras, if you want to do this, you have to set the aperture, then awkwardly and slowly futz with the shutter-speed dial next to the film advance for proper exposure. With the Electro, you set aperture and shoot...

4. Fast - it offers you complete "creative control" over the most important aspect of image rendering, the aperture.

5. It meters in fractions of stops as only a stepless shutter can. So many of your other cameras - shutter priority and virtual shutter-priority (manual) cameras, might be off by up to 1/2 a stop. (Doesn't matter? Then why do people insist on rating the box speed of their film +/- 1/2-stop?)


(If you want to take cliched pics of a water droplet "frozen" in time (yawn), shoot with a different camera, like a DSLR with a 1/10,000 top shutter speed set on "shutter priority" mode.) Those of discount the Electro, do so probably because it "doesn't cost enough" to be taken seriously. Fact is, it "blows away" your non-aperture priority/non-stepless shutter camera for RF photography, regardless of manuacturer, mytique, and cost.

 

[FallisPhoto]

This person "gets it".

Yeah, but it's a GX, not a GSN/GTN -- nice camera, but lots of lens flare.

 

[ully]

What Nick is suggesting is

What Nick is suggesting is

more likely a result of the history of using rules like "sunny sixteen" and "reciprocal of lens lengths". I often set shutter speed to sunny sixteen just for ease of use, only tweaking it for faster action situations. I use the Konica Auto s2 and Minolta himatic 7 manual cameras and set speed first to give me full range of aperture settings.

The old Lynx 5000 was a different breed because it had coupled speed and apeture rings with over under meter.


Generally I agree with Nick on the fact that most will use the manual cameras this way.

Cheers

 

[Anupam]

4. Fast - it offers you complete "creative control" over the most important aspect of image rendering, the aperture.

Arguably, the most important part of the image is exposure and the Electros offer you NO control over it. And depending on what you are shooting and the effect you are trying to get, shutter speed can be just as important as aperture.

5. It meters in fractions of stops as only a stepless shutter can. So many of your other cameras - shutter priority and virtual shutter-priority (manual) cameras, might be off by up to 1/2 a stop. (Doesn't matter? Then why do people insist on rating the box speed of their film +/- 1/2-stop?)

What eludes me is if you are so very particular about the accuracy of exposure, how come you are happy shooting everything at middle gray?

-A

 

[pesphoto]

Arguably, the most important part of the image is exposure and the Electros offer you NO control over it. And depending on what you are shooting and the effect you are trying to get, shutter speed can be just as important as aperture.


What eludes me is if you are so very particular about the accuracy of exposure, how come you are happy shooting everything at middle gray?

-A

Actually, with Electros, you CAN control shutter speed by adjusting your ASA dial. In effect, creating a "manual" camera of sorts and having more control over the outcome for certain scenes, avoiding that "middle Gray" you speak of if that is what is desired.

 

[ruben]

Hi Nicky,

I am a shutter priority guy due to my needs of street shooting, where most of the times I am at a fixed 1/250 on daylight, or 1/50 by night, with my Kievs or whatever.

But I may be a strange byrd, and it doesn't matter.

However, owning several Electros, I have had always a ceirtain feeling that beyond the two lights warning and the aperture priority, there is an intelligent and straightforward way for manipulating exposure to be investigated and discovered. Now you may be thinking I am jocking, but I am not. It is just a feeling.

The story about selecting an aperture, and "leaving" the speed to the camera to take care of it, without you knowing what the camera is doing, sounds to me just silly.

Of course with the Electros you can know it upon reaching the extremes (lights) and starting a count down, but this is precisely whay I think a better way should be found. Perhaps it is about the use of a handheld meter from time to time to have a feeling of what the camera is going to do. Perhaps it is another thing.



Cheers,
Ruben