Well, I have a few minutes spare here, before I shoot off and film some nonsense about Tolkien (bloody trolls and goblins...), so partially in answer to Julie's request for enablement, here's how, after waiting over 20 years, I came by my first LX...
In the early eighties I was starting my career in film and tv, and was a freelance assistant film editor in London. I was working on a film of Wimbledon (1982 - The All-England Lawn Tennis Association commissions a film every year for sponsors etc) and the post-production company where I was working had organised a parachute jump for charity at Headcorn in Kent. At the time, I had an MX and a few lenses, and was well into the photography. I had no interest whatsoever in throwing myself out of an aircraft - but volunteered to go along as team photographer. I promptly realised that my lone MX was going to need company, and so I hired an LX plus motor drive and NiCad battery for the weekend. Suffice it to say that the weekend went well, I got plenty of good shots, the LX was brilliant - in fact I have no real recollection about the actual time there other than some very bad hangovers. I vaguely remember the LX feeling totally different to the MX, the weight, the 'professional bashed-aboutness' of it. And the motor drive ran like an egg-beater (eg: bloody fast!)... Back to reality, and back to my MX, which a few years later was joined by a 2nd, and then a lens here and a lens there - the lenses ebbed and flowed just like the tide. I never had a problem with the manual metering on the MX, it always felt natural to meter that way - ever since using Zeniths and the single Spotmatic at art college, manual was just fine. It was fairly quick, and you didn't have to piss about with compensation dials or auto-lock buttons. You metered, you focussed, you shot. Now taking that quantum worm-hole forward in time to about six months ago, here I am, still with a pair of MXs, and a collections of lenses. And still, my view on manual cameras was the same: they work fine, I have no need for anything else. The MX is a solid camera, in black it looks the business, it's not really in the same family as the other 'M...' cameras, much more in common with the LX, so it has access to a motor drive (which I got - incidentally I found the PDML while searching for the drive...) and screens and a zillion other bits and bobs. It suited me fine. In fact I was (still am) a great champion of the MX. I used to see all these emails from LX owners who'd write something like: > ....yeah but you don't truly know until you've held the LX ;-) and > ....pick an LX up and you'll never go back ;-) always with the winks on the end - the winks! Why are they winking at me? Every LX owner seems to think they are so smart because they own an LX that they have to punctuate any and every statement about the LX with a wink! I thought: yeah yeah yeah, LX = pots of money = king of the pile. 'Scuse me guv'nor, I'll just hobble past you, what me being an MX owner (with a humped back), and you bein' an LX owner an' all (proud and stable gait), cough cough, splutter, wheeze... ANYWAY, about six months ago, I had a long hard think, and I arrived at a decision that would change everything. Now my pictures, for the most part, are portraits. I enjoy photographing people, aI enjoy seeing pictures of people. Faces tell their own story, and as a photographer it's up to me to do that face and that story some justice. I love the challenge. Using the MX is fine, no problem. Except...when the light changes fairly quickly. I don't mean because the clouds blow by so fast that I can't keep up with the sun going in and out every 10 seconds. I mean because the portrait is being shot with movement, with changes in angle, with oblivion to the actual light itself. The most important thing for me is the face - sure the light is crucial, but given two pics of the same face, one that tells the story perfectly but is not brilliantly lit, the other brilliantly lit but I'm not happy with the face - the former will always win with me. Shooting in natural light, these things are important - and the MX reaches a point where it can't cope - I can't cope - with exposure. So, what to do? I toyed with getting a simple auto-only camera like an MV or MG is it? I once had an ME-Super and hated it. The manual buttons were too fiddly for me (just upset half the PDML...) - don't forget, I have zero patience. That's why I love wildlife shots, but can't do them! One of my MX bodies was getting rather past it - the foam was melting away to treacle and the pentaprism looked like a relief map of the Himalayas. So I could perhaps replace that MX with something else, then have an auto/manual camera and an MX, for a pretty cool combo. What to get? MZ-S was going to be outside my budget. PZ-1p and all that - I'm sure they're great cameras, but don't forget, I love the MX, so it had to be something related...pretty much in fact that I guess there was nothing for it, it was going to have to be an LX. So I read and read and read. I tried to recall the charity parachute jump time, failed miserably. I read some more, and started to yearn. Then I yearned and yearned. And yearned! Then- one came up for sale: a PDMLer in France offered one to the list and it had just had a CLA - my main concern. It was supposed to be in pretty good shape, and the price was right, so I jumped. The last time I had handled an LX was 1982. When it arrived, I was suddenly transformed from an MX-user with a chip on his shoulder about LX-users winking at him, to an altogether different state of photographic mind. Suddenly, nothing was too much of a problem. Suddenly everything was okay, cool even. As for the camera, think MX multiplied by a factor of 100. It is simply superb. The build quality is immediately noticeable. Little things, like on the MX, if you want to change the shutter speed, the dial is really difficult to turn with one finger? On the LX, it slides perfectly around, clicking reassuringly, with one finger. The shutter lock similarly. Everything on it is designed and built carefully and - well - professionally! Others have talked about the metering system and the functions, so I won't bore you with the detail. It is, very simply put, close to photographic hardware perfection. NOW, when I write to the PDML about LXs, I'm sorry to say, that I now have that ever-so-wise auro about me. That quaint upturn of the corners of the mouth with the slight narrowing of the eyes, the gentle nod of the head that says, 'ahh yes, of course, you don't have an LX, hmmm, if only you knew what I know, ahh, hmm (more gentle nodding), well, I guess one day you'll find out...' The fact is you don't need anyone to enable you, it's really easy to do it yourself...and - I really really mean this, honestly: you won't understand what I mean until you've used an LX ;-) Cotty _______________________________________________________ Personal email traffic to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MacAds traffic to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Check out the UK Macintosh ads http://www.macads.co.uk - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
