[Leica] M7 feasibility (longish)

[Frank Dernie <FrankDernie@compuserve.com>]

Hello all,
I have been largely lurking and enjoying for the last couple of months, I=

do not have internet access so fell on the LUG as e mail by chance. Great=

fun. I am a keen amateur who is a design engineer. I have always been
particularly fascinated by clever precision engineering and have studied
the Leica rangefinder design out of interest. I have been buying used
mechanical cameras for the sheer enjoyment of the mechanism ever since
people started to replace them by the auto electronic gizmos. Several
points come to mind regarding the "wants lists" for a new M7.

Most requests concern electronic shutter, TTL flash & high sync speed in
the same size body and relocating the controls. In order to have a high
sync speed the shutter would have to travel faster, giving more vibration=

and possible uneven performance. A vertical travel electronic shutter wou=
ld
probably be required to achieve all the goals, and would be much cheaper
but would change the shape of the body. The shape , size and position of
the controls is dictated by the mechanical layout and can be traced back =
to
the 1923 design. The ease with which controls can be put anywhere nowaday=
s
is a byproduct of flexible printed circuits. Moving controls on a
mechanical camera would mean more parts, less precision, larger size, mor=
e
weight, higher cost and probable reduced reliability.

In fact isn't an up to date CL2 what is being requested. Or to be more
precise a 1998 CLE. Incidentally in a book I was looking at recently a
wooden dummy Leica just about identical to the CLE was illustrated. The
author speculated that the CLE was another Leitz Minolta cooperation that=

Leitz pulled out of rather than a complete Minolta product.

Cheers
Frank