Meters & Feet?

I have a russian elmar that is in meters and my summar is in feet

that is on my leica.. Now for what maybe a stupid question. Does

the rangefinder cam know the difference? does it matter?

 

I guess what I am asking is. Are there feet rangefinder camera

and are the meter rangefinder cameras?

 

 

Thanks

Skinny

They're just marks engraved on the mount. The camera still reads the cam. Some lenses have been made with BOTH feet and meters. It doesn't matter.

Thanks Al

Some twenty odd years ago while the zealots in this country were agitating for "hard" metrication, there appeared in the Co-evolution Quarterly a cartoon that showed a meter sized midget superimosed on DaVinci's famous 'proportional' man. I don't recall the caption and sidebar but it illustrated the folly of 'hard' conversion which haunts our British cousins to this day when they can no longer (as I have been told) buy eggs by the dozen or mild and bitter by the pint.

Meanwhile in this country 'hard' conversion has deemed that by law we buy our scotch or gin in either .75 liter or 1.75 liter bottles. I can only presume that these quantities were chosen to approximate the old measures of fifths and half-gallons. I feel cheated each time I visit the spirits dispenser. However, as a man ofthirst I suppose I should be grateful that I can still buy Tanquerey or Glennlivet irrespective of the size of the container. . . "A pint's a pound the world around!"

The metric system never really caught on in the USA, excepting

of course, the nine millimeter bullet.

 

Tom

The metric system is catching on slowly, it`s just no going to be as fast as mandated years age. All the new engines for General Motorts are now all metric fasteners. The speedometer on my 2004 changes from kilometers to MPH at the push of a buttom.

 

I have a devil of a time with recipies as they are in strange units like TBL and cup.

 

I`ll take metric anytime!

How many of us have two inch lenses, as opposed to 50mm? Actually some of the older American large format lenses are in inches. (Example: Kodak ten inch Wide Field Ektar)

I used to win quite a few drinks by betting that I could measure out a mile more accurately without a tape or tool other than my feet and legs than anyone else could measure out a kilometer by the same means. The only times I lost were when I was well lathered by winning the previous five or six bets. The philosophes who invented metrication had a chance to devise a much better system based upon angular measurements of the earth, but like their countrymen of today, they were too overwhelmed by their presumed intellectual superiority and worked out an abstraction totally unrelated to proportions found in either mankind or nature.

For years I was meteorologist where everything is metric, temperature in Kelvin (not degrees Kelvin), but to get an understanding I have to do a mental conversion to good old English units. I was reading the instruction booklet for the Contax IIa recently and it described the focal lengths of various lenses in inches. Boy, did that seem strange. A 50 mm lens became a 2 inch lens, etc. I found myself having to do a reverse conversion to understand what kind of lens they were talking about. Furlongs per fortnight is my favorite measure of speed.

Its a good thing lens aren't horses they be half a hand long

They would also be hard to look thru

"...excepting of course, the nine millimeter bullet..." <p> We already had it --> .357 ;-)

I've been to over 50 refineries/pipelines/power plants and all, but one used ASTM/ASME/API pipe dimensions in inches. But, they use all sorts of units for pressure/mass and volume flow rate and temperature, never the same combination in my experience.

 

In high school I remember Ford's push to the metric system before 1876, US bicentennial.

President Ford, not Ford automotive, and 1976 not 1876.

On a related topic, an English banker recently explained to me the advantage of Britain's pre-1970s duodecimal money system (12 pence to the shilling) over our American decimal system (10 cents to the dime).

 

Having 12 rather than 10 as the money base allows equal division in a greater number of different ways, as 12 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, while 10 is evenly divisible only by 2 and 5 (discounting the trivial case of division by 1 and 12 or 10, respectively).

 

Sometimes it pays to be fluent in all systems, English and metric, decimal and duodecimal. Just last night I was having a drink with a Russian girl who warned me that her brother is 2 meters tall. I didn't have to whip out my calculator to factor that into the equation.

 

And when people ask me what my ideal weight would be I say 154 pounds...not because I've actually been that weight at any time in the last 20 years, but rather because of this odd fact: when the World Health Organization issues its tables on human nutrition, the stated RDAs (recommended dietary allowances) are based on a 70 kilogram male. Since 70kg equals 154 lbs, I can figure out how much to eat without introducing a conversion factor. And since 154lbs also equals 11 stone, I can continue to speak mutually intelligible English with friends and relatives overseas.

 

By the way, the reason Harry can easily measure off an accurate mile is that the average man's pace is 30 inches, yielding a stride (that is, two paces) of 5 feet. In the metric system, I doubt any man alive has a one meter pace, and if such a man exists, I'm hoping it's not the Russian girl's brother.

I'm sure Robert Mapplethorpe would not rename the picture Mr. 10 1/2 with Mr. 26.7

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<BR>

<a href="http://www.american-buddha.com/maplethorpe.25.htm">Mr. 10 1/2 (Marc Stevens) - CAUTION - Adult Content.</a>

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Is this a Hasselblad shot? or is it a Leica-M?

This cool feet to meters conversion chart came attached to the back of a an early Kodak Retina I acquired. It was carefully typed on a piece of stained and yellowing paper. After all that good work and the inspired use of non-adhesive Scotch tape someone's lapse in judgement ruined the leather finish through the application of some grey crud under where the tape had mysteriously clung to the camera.

 

Feet = Meters

 

3.5 = 1.1

 

4.0 = 1.2

 

5.0 = 1.5

 

6.0 = 1.8

 

7.0 = 2.2

 

8.0 = 2.5

 

10. = 3.1

 

15. = 4.7

 

20. = 6.2

 

30. = 9.4

 

I hope this helps. Good luck!

A pint is only a pound when you use the short, wine or American gallon. In the English-speaking world a pint is 20 oz and a gallon is 4.54 litres (not liters) instead of 3.96 litres. Likewise a ton is 2240 lb.

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

Sheldon Hambrick Dec 11 2004 05:41pm wrote,

 

"...excepting of course, the nine millimeter bullet..." <p> We already had it --> .357 ;-)

 

 

Maybe, but you guys never discovered the 7 millimeter bullet until the battle of San Juan Hill during the American/Spanish war ;-)

American cars switched over to metric some time ago. Spark plugs (except for Ford) have been 14mm for years. Other threaded parts and hex sizes changed over in the eighties. Engine displacement has also been listed in liters for some years.

Actually a 50mm lens is a badly rounded 2 inch (50.8mm) lens. Remember that E. Leitz were microscope manufacturers hence R.M.S. measurements -- in Imperial inches. This may also explain the 39mm x 26 tpi thread of the screw-mount Leica. Pity the colonies didn't always get Imperial measurements right (cf the short, wine or American gallon).

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

Well, ask a simple question get a simple answer?

Glad I could light the boiler

Roger wrote: "Pity the colonies didn't always get Imperial measurements right (cf the short, wine or American gallon)".

 

Well, the decision on whether to adopt that particular measure came up shortly after the War of 1812. In a manner that has become familiar in recent times (think "Freedom Fries") the US Congress refused to adopt a measure that was basically British in origin.

 

Mike Spencer

In Electrical engineering we have American Wire Gage. The legal two reference points are 36 AWG is exactly 0.0050 inches in diameter. The other reference is 0000 size is 0.4600 inch diameter. Now there are 39 steps from one to another.<BR><BR> The diameter ratio of the references is .46/0.005 = 92. <b>The diameter of each gage size is larger by the 39th root of 92.</b> This is about 1.122932. Squaring this gives the cross sectional area ratio between each gage; about 1.260977. With a slide rule we just used 1.261 :).<BR><BR>Jumping 2 gages is a 1.59 area or resistance ratio; Jumping 3 gages is 2.005 ; or 2.00 to slide rule accuracy. <b>The sizes were purposely made to vary so jumping 3 AWG sizes drops the resisance in half; or double. </b>Thus a 18 AWG wire in parallel with another 18 AWG wire is equal to a 15 AWG in DC resistance. Placing 4 in parallel would be like a 12 AWG wire. Thus those wimpy 18 AWG extension cords drop the voltage roughly 4 times that of an 12 AWG extension cord. In practice AC has reactance; so the drop is different; by darn close manytimes. <BR><BR><BR><b>The "give me": the Lord gave us Electrical engineers is that copper wire is about 1.0 Ohms per 1000 feet; for 10 AWG wire; and it is about 0.10 inch diameter too.</B><BR><BR>Thus a single strand of 250 foot 12 AWG Copper wire would have resistance of 0.25 * 1.26 * 1.26 = 0.4 ohm.