I have two R8 bodies. When I am in any of the metering modes and press on the shutter relaese button to hold the exposure, the read out in the viewfinder continues to change if I repostion the subject covered in the finder. I had always thought that depressing the button part way was supposed to hold the exposure until the shutter was fired.

If there is any insight out there, I would appreciate it. And yes, I did read the manual.

Many thanks Partially Depressed,

Bob

-- Robert Burgess (bobburgess@earthlink.net), April 29, 2001

Answers

Holding the shutter button down partway is supposed to lock the meter reading (and display)in *selective (spot)* mode in any of the *automatic* exposure modes (A, S, P). It doesn't work with center- weighted or matrix metering as Nikons do. Another irritating quirk of the R8, but at least not as bad as the R7 where you must be in A mode to use AE-lock because that's the only auto mode you can use with spotmetering.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), April 29, 2001.

I can see the logic in this approach from Leica's perspective, actually as Matrix-type metering is meant to give you the correct exposure without any kind of selective metering, but this logic is less good when thinking of center-weighted metering I suppose.

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), April 30, 2001.

Robert,

No need for you to be partially depressed; only the shutter button should be in that state! And, as Jay says, it works only with selective metering. You can tell when the camera locks the exposure because the metering mode symbol disappears from the viewfinder.

Regards, Ray

-- Ray Moth (ray_moth@yahoo.com), May 01, 2001.