Sorry for the repeat, I failed to fix my e-mail address from .com to .net Here it is again...Took new M7 on LA television commercial production. Used it for production stills during work days at Pacific Pallisades location right on ocean shore line. Also shot some personal work during off time. Specifically Venice Beach and celeb photos at "Independant Spirt Awards in Santa Monica". Shot color (160 Fuji neg, and C41 Black and white ( Portra 400 B&W & some Illford). Some of the film crew were blown away that I already had an M7. Developed negs and proofs right there so I wouldn't have to take exposed film back through airport security at LAX. Also took a M6 TTL .085 as second camera. Used 21/2.8 ASPH, 28/2 ASPH, 35/1.4 ASPH, 50/1.0 Noct. and 90/2 APO. Here's my reaction: 1) M7 is quick. But if you're using M7 and M6 you have to pay attention. Occasionally I almost forgot to adjust M6 per metering because you quickly get use to the M7 selecting an aperture for you. (Remember, the situations I was shooting under were fast and furious). 2) The shutter release takes some getting use to. Technically it may have less lag time, but in practice it definately has a sort of sticking point where it locks the AE reading. It threw me a couple of times when I was under pressure. 3) The M7 did something weird during prolonged shooting with lulls in between. It suddenly failed to respond when I pressed the shutter button. And I mean failed to respond at all despite pressing hard on the shutter button. And I couldn't advance the film. I immediately flipped the on/off switch and it was okay then. I don't know if the on/off swich was slightly moved and caused it or what --but it wasn't showing the red "off "dot. I certainly do hope this is user error and not a "BUG". I think it may shut down after not using it for some period. so that will take some getting use to. 4) In back lit situations the M7 is no faster than a M6. You have to fool the meter by reading some correct middle tone , lock the AE, then recompose. With the M6 its just a matter of opening up with out all the rigamaroll. In California I had lots of back lit situations, or very bright scenes requiring different adjustments each time. I ended up with a greater % of under exposed negs than I usually get with the M6. But that's just a matter of getting use to it i suppose. 5) I do wish they would've upped the top shutter speed. Using 400 ISO B&W had me at 1/750 to 1/1,000th at f/16 even with a Polarizer fitted. After Leica announced that the shutter speed stayed at 1/1,000th, I ordered 3stop ND Heliopans for each different Leica filter size, but they didn't arrive in time. I'm in the process of scanning the best stuff from this trip, and it's slow going because the lab I used was a bunch of "piggy processors". Far as I can tell, I got 6 to 10 usable shots from each of 10 rolls of 36. Anyone else had experiences under fire with the M7?

--Marc Williams

-- Marc Williams (mwilliams111313MI@comcast.net), March 25, 2002

Answers

"With the M6 its just a matter of opening up with out all the rigamaroll."

Bingo.

-- jeff (debontekou@yahoo.com), March 25, 2002.

Ditto 'Bingo'. Why bother with an M7 if the metering is still 'spot'. You might as well use a manual M6 if you have got to meter, AE lock, and re compose. Just seems daft, aperture priority cameras should have centre weighted or multi pattern metering so you can safely point and shoot.

-- Gary Yeowell (gary@yeowell.fsnet.co.uk), March 25, 2002.

"Occasionally I almost forgot to adjust M6 per metering because you quickly get use to the M7 selecting an aperture for you. (Remember, the situations I was shooting under were fast and furious)" Don't you mean selecting a shutter speed?

-- Phil Stiles (Stiles@metrocast.net), March 25, 2002.

Sorry all, not only did I post under the wrong e-mail address with this specific message, I also screwed up the report by referencing "aperature" instead of the correct "shutter speed" as being controlled by the M7. Jet lag and 2 hours sleep does take it's toll on the brain. That's nothing, you should see the horrible scans I did this AM. Check out the 2nd posting after this one. Still wrong but the right address. ---Marc

-- Marc Williams (mwilliams111313MI@comcast.net), March 25, 2002.

Marc, is there a reason why tou choose asph lenses, i read the harsh ligthing sytuations you had to deal, understand perfectly what happen around your M7, is so logical as youŽre so used to old M bodies, this is a new tool and probably hard users will have to change all their bodies in horder to make it less disturb, hope it becomes a great tool and keep M production. On the other side i read about the lenses you where using, I can see you mantain a regular quality on your optica, could you show us some of the 35Žlux images, specialy backligths.Best Regards.

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), March 25, 2002.

The jamming of the shutter release button happened to me also several times. It seems that the lock colar is not very well mounted. been using the M7 for a week now and further no complaints

-- Rene (gwailoo@hotmail.com), March 26, 2002.

Hey Marc, Thanks for the review, I'm just about about to make the plunge and am on the fence about whether to go with the 6 or 7. The one big thing I'm still considering is the the flare issue. Any thoughts? You mentioned back lit situations, and I was wondering if you noticed any difference.

Thanks, sprouty

P.S. By the way I just checked with a local dealer (Boston area) and was quoted a price of $2900(!) for an M6. His rational was that they're out of production now and so that's what they're going for...

-- sprouty (sprouty115@cox.net), March 26, 2002.

Having now played around with the M7 for a week, I can report the following regarding its performance. All of the functions I have been able to test (see below for ones I could not test) work well, as described in the manual. There is no delay on pressing the shutter button (as long as the camera has been ON), just as in the M6 and earlier cameras. The only delay you may experience occurs if you turn ON the camera from the OFF position, there is a few seconds before the shutter will operate, so just leave it on and in stanby mode when using.

What may be perceived as a "delay", but which is not, is that there are now two pressure points in the shutter release (first for meter activation and second for meter memory lock), in contrast to the M6, which just had one pressure point. Thus, a little more force is required to trip the shutter, because of the second pressure point.

Finally, there are some interesting things you can do with the M7 that I could not test because they require an SCA3502/3501 flash adapter and suitable flash unit. With the SF20, the M7 works just like the M6-TTL. But with the above flash adapters, you can do second curtain sync (the default is first curtain sync, which you get with the SF20), strobe flash, and high speed sync (which was described by others in prior threads). The strobe flash allows you to record motion in distinct stages by varying the number of flash pulses with the shutter wide open. As I recall, this only works using the SCA3502 adapter. This works with TTL and AUTO settings or on manual shutter speeds of 1/50 or less.

As far as the HSS, the camera must be on manual at 1/250, 1/500, or 1/1000 sec shutter speed. The flash unit (right now I think only Metz MZ3 will work, maybe others later) must also be set on manual. So with HSS, there is no TTL or flash computer metering (a bummer!).

BTW, the M7 automatically transfers the camera ISO setting to a dedicated flash unit such as the SF20. Therefore, you cannot separately vary the ISO on a dedicated flash to achieve flash exposure compensation that way.

-- Eliot (erosen@lij.edu), March 27, 2002.