I had the good fortune today to happen upon an M7 at The Camera Trader in Engelwood, CO. Something I noticed that I don't remember reading in any reviews: the LED arrows and middle "dot" in manual mode are quite a bit smaller and more closely spaced than in the M6TTL. Also, the shutter speed LEDs are quite small. I found the constantly changing numbers in auto mode a bit distracting, especially since they are showing stepless speeds. The decimal in the shutter speed readout is a bit weird - seeing a shutter speed like 1.80 doesn't mean much to my "manual" brain.

I suppose I could get used to it, but honestly, I didn't get the "Oh, my God, I must have this camera!" feeling the way I did when I first handled an M6. I suppose we like best what we own and are accustomed to. BTW, I got a new 90E today, wow.

-- Ken Geter (kgeter@yahoo.com), March 30, 2002

Answers

i went to newtonville camera in newtonville mass yesterday intending to buy an m7 they had in stock. after playing with the store demo, i decided to hold off. had the same reaction as ken -- it wasn't a "me must have now" item. i came to feel it was neither fish nor fowl -- an automated camera that was only half automated. when i want to shoot quickly, making up for deliberation with increased volume of shots, i'd be better off with a real automatic -- a G2 or a T3 even. i remembered that what i like about my other leicas is the way they slow me down a little and make think about shots more. i actually remembered some of travis' shots posted here recently. many of them are 90% there, but would have benefitted from a little more patience, a little more thought about composition. when you go the auto route, at least in my personal experience, you often start taking more frames and get a little less discriminating about what you shoot. you end up with a lot more shots, but also a lot that are only 90% of what they mite have been had you slowed down long enuff to think. everybody knows what a film miser HCB was. eisenstadt, in a famous anecdote, recalled walking around some city with HCB, burning several rolls of film. HCB shot one frame, i think the one of men looking thru a peephole at a construction site. HCB's single frame became a signature image, eisenstadt chucked his negs into the pile. after going home, i followed my daughter and a group of friends around on an easter egg hunt. took my iiig with new screw summilux 50. took 4 shots, one's a keeper. would i have gotten it with the m7 -- maybe. but when you know you are only going to get a single chance, you definitely approach things differently. i may still get an m7, but not today, or tomorrow . . . . p.s. one thing that also gives me pause about the m7 is the longevity issue. there are a dozen repairers in boston who can overhaul a 70 year old leica standard, fix almost any prob. and yet nobody will touch a cle, and even if they would, the electronic parts are unavailable. will the m7 also be unrepairable in fifteen years??

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), March 31, 2002.

I would bet my M3 that Leica will still be around 15 years from now to repair it. Just my 2 cents.

-- John Abela (jamriman@yahoo.com), March 31, 2002.

I also handled a new M7 yesterday and while I can still use the finder in it with the distance part of my bifocals, I found that I had to look through the bottom part of my bifocals to clearly see the LED's and shutter numerals. I won't say I'll never buy an M7 but I am certainly not so impressed as to plop down full price now when I know that in a few months or a year the new price will be lower and there will be used and demos around. I still will keep my Hexar RF as my "automatic M" body because in that department it still outperforms the M7. And the M6 classics that did well for me for more than a dozen years show no signs of ceasing to do so.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), March 31, 2002.

"everybody knows what a film miser HCB was. eisenstadt, in a famous anecdote, recalled walking around some city with HCB, burning several rolls of film. HCB shot one frame, i think the one of men looking thru a peephole at a construction site. HCB's single frame became a signature image, eisenstadt chucked his negs into the pile."

Speaking of pile, do you honestly believe this?

HCB apparently has one of the LARGEST archives of anyone at Magnum, volumes and volumes of contact sheets -- thousands of frames -- on which he worked and reworked scenes, allowing him to select "the decisive moment." He ain't a god, and he wasn't taking birthday party snaps of little Susie. Ole Hank worked like any other serious photographer operating in the street idiom: he shot A LOT and threw away (at least metaphorically) most of it.

Let me guess: you also believe that the 83 frames printed in Robert Frank's "The Americans" are the only ones he shot while crossing the country?

-- George T. (davecasman@yahoo.com), March 31, 2002.

Congratulations on your new toy Ken. I look forward to seeing what you can do with it. The 90E is a great lens, even though I swear by my 90AAA. Though if I can't work the focusing out I will go back to my Nikon F100 and AF 85mm f/1.4D I loved so dearly.

Good luck and make sure you get the 1.25X. I just received mine and hope it helps. If not, see you later APO-gator!!!

-- Kristian (leicashot@hotmail.com), March 31, 2002.

george -- you should definitely read up up on HCB's techniques if you are sincerely interested. he was, wihout question, very miserly with film. there are many stories of how he would carry the camera all day in seach of "prey" (his word, or at least his word translated into english) without shooting a frame. needless to say, apart from his personal work, he did a tremendous amount of assigned editorial photography. in these situations, he was doubtless far more liberal. if you remember that during a big hunk of his career, he was using screw leicas (and in the pre-leicavit days -- there is no evidence that he used one anyway), it is easy to imagine why he didn't burn film. in addition to the eisenstadt story, which i have seen printed many places, there is also a story in beaumont newhall's recent bio. newhall had spent the day with HCB, hoping to watch the master in action. HCB didn't shoot a single frame all day. during dinner with a larger group, newhall turned just in time to see HCB pop up from his seat, take a pic, and sit back down. HCB had snapped a single frame of another diner, i think a well-known film director who was then in the news. the pic ran two days later in some journal, and newhall described it as a sublime portrait of a man known to be a difficult subject. no, HCB was not a god -- far from it -- but he did have a knack for spotting a good photo, and had the reflexes to grab it. although it may be annoying to lesser photogs, HCB's portfolio was simply not compiled in the "monkeys typing out the works of shakespeare mode" -- just the opposite.

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), March 31, 2002.

Kristian: Thanks for your thoughts on the 90. I haven't got any results back yet. I took a roll yesterday, but my favorite processing place was closed today (Easter, d'oh). I thought long and hard about the 90APO but couldn't justify the extra dinero. The APOs I'd seen all had really stiff focusing rings. This combined with the extra diameter of the lens seemed to make the APO too slow to focus for me. I'd be interested in what you think of the 1.25x magnifier.

Looks like my comments on the M7 got somewhat derailed. The more I think about it, the more hokey I believe the M7 LEDs are. I came from many years as a Nikon FM2 user though, so anything more than 3 LEDs is overload for me.

-- Ken Geter (kgeter@yahoo.com), March 31, 2002.

Roger -- yours is a warm and embracing fantasy, willingly propagated and bolstered by HCB himself. Talk to photographers who have looked through his archive at Magnum. It's huge. And many of his signature "decisive moment" snaps came from rolls where he worked and reworked a scene until he got what he wanted. He was a prodigious photographic talent, unquestionably. But he used his 35mm cameras the way all 35mm street photographers do. He captured a multitude of images and variations and selected from his contact sheets. This knowledge takes nothing away from his skill, but perhaps it does knock him off Mt. Olympus. And the monkeys typing Shakespeare jab is pure crap. If photography actually worked that way, there'd be many more Cartier-Bresson's and far fewer examples of mediocre (or worse) photography like what gets posted here every week.

-- George T. (davecasman@yahoo.com), March 31, 2002.

george -- you seem a little hot under the collar about matters HCB ("jab," directed at whom??), so i'll drop it and leave people to read up on the subject and draw their own conclusions. the basic point i was making, irrespective of the technique of anyone in particular, is that when you fall into the mode of shooting lots of frames quickly -- as automated cameras can encourage you to do -- you may end up taking fewer well-considered, well-composed shots. end of story. it may be worth noting, however, that i read somewhere that SI shot the equivalent of 5,000 rolls of film in the course of generating the images for its most recent swimsuit issue (i don't know how many photogs, models, or shooting days were involved -- obviously many -- but i think an f5 can burn a roll of 36 in about 7 secs). based on what you think of SI's results, maybe there is room for the monkey/typewrite approach -- it's just a question of using enough monkeys.

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), March 31, 2002.

Roger -- No heat, just endless weariness at the notion that Cartier-Bresson somehow transcends the realm (and reality) of 35mm photography. Cartier-Bresson, for all of his tremendous talent, was and is a zealous promoter of the myth of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Logic and common sense alone should tell you that the notion of "hav(ing) a knack for spotting a good photo, and (having) the reflexes to grab it," is basically bunk; careers aren't made that way. Sure it can happen, but rest assured that while Cartier-Bresson may have built his persona with this methodology, he didn't build his portfolio the same way. Working with a motordrive, BTW, is in no way the same thing as working a scene. Hank didn't need a motor to wait patiently at the bottom of a stone staircase until a girl ran by. But he did burn up most of a roll of film on that staircase, trying other possibilities, until that "decisive moment" presented itself. ALL good photographers work this way; don't kid yourself. Why does HCB want to look at a photographer's contact sheets rather than finished prints? To see how the photographer works a scene, to see that the photographer isn't simply out there taking potshots, that's why. IOW, he wants proof that the photographer knows how to work the way he did.

-- George T. (davecasman@yahoo.com), March 31, 2002.

Roger. Enough of this M7 bashing and HCB nonsense. I don't see how one is remotely related to the other, but both are past the point of being tiresome. We know your opinion. If you don't want an M7, don't buy it. Noone cares.

-- Eliot (erosen@lij.edu), April 01, 2002.

Hey Ken,

Congratulations on your new 90E (I don't want an M7 either.)

-- Michael Kastner (kastner@zedat.fu-berlin.de), April 01, 2002.

eliot -- and who exactly is twtisting your arm, forcing you to read particular threads/posts?? i am well aware of your firm conviction that everything leica is good, a view i largely share, but your flaming of anyone who dares suggest that there may be a flaw in something from solms, portugal or wherever is likewise getting tiresome for me. as this is a leica specific site, and as the m7 is the first major redesign of the company's flagship rf product in many years, i expect there will be a lot more comment -- both pro AND con. so i would brace yourself. there may be some more complaints coming.

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), April 01, 2002.

Roger. Perhaps I was a little harsh. It wasn't really aimed at you personally, though I mentioned your name. I welcome criticism of any Leica product (which I have done myself at times). However, I get tired of seeing the same stuff over and over and over on multiple threads by the same persons. For example, this stuff about people worried about battery availability in 50 years.

I think it is a disservice to people who may occasionally visit this site looking for information about products like the M7 and see some of these criticisms. They may not be aware that it is from the same individuals who think anything with any electronics is bad and post and post their opinions over and over again. I think it is far more likely that the majority of individuals who like the M7 do not come and post their opinions. So the negative stuff needs to be balanced.

I try to say at least one thing new in my posts (although I may not always succeed). Look over my old posts, you'll find that I am not always enomred with Leica products, and I don't hesitate to say so.

-- Eliot (erosen@lij.edu), April 01, 2002.

eliot -- you seem like a very sensible guy to me. i know what you mean about recurring posts. i am a longtime contributor to several other hobby fora, and know the problem. the sad truth is, there are some issues that people (often different people) are going to bring up over and over again throughout the years (in MF, the square vs. the rectangle; merits of the zone system; blad vs. er . . . everything else; graded vs. VC; etc, etc etc). people have two choices: they can accept this inevitability, or they can migrate from site to site as things get stale. i personally have never posted here about HCB (i may be wrong, that is my present memory though), and have posted very little about the BIGGEST NEWS FROM LEICA IN 25 YEARS; i.e. the m7. i can scarcely think ten sentences about HCB, and seven about the m7 can possible count as overkill on a LEICA SPECIFIC site. frankly, i am shocked that there aren't ten posts a day about the new m7 -- good or bad. if one were to worry about something, it mite be this relative lack of interest in the new camera more than what is actually being said about it. as i said before, i think (hope) the m7 will get much more air time here as the bodies get more broadly disseminated. if you're already fed up, now mite be a good time to do some dark room work!! (just kidding!) cheers!

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), April 01, 2002.