Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/07/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]In a message dated 7/8/99 5:35:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time, msmall@roanoke.infi.net writes: << Hmm. I suspect the Postwar cameras were better built than the Prewar. Leitz was really cash-poor in the '30's and had a small and ill-paid labour force on which to draw. After the War, Leitz happened to find the European headquarters for the American military PX system located nearby and this became a steady and quite large customer for fifteen years. Leitz was able to obtain better materials Postwar than Prewar, due to the German military not scarfing up all the best steel, bronze, brass, and optical glass, the sole exception being the vulcanite used for the covering, as this required petrochemicals which Germany had to buy with hard currency, an impossibility until 1950 or so. I have owned Prewar LTM cameras and have never found them as solidly built as the Postwar IIIc and IIIf models. Now, these guys are, as Jason Schneider recounts, "sexy devils". Marc >> My own IIIf has an operational smoothness and finish quality that is not quite there in the IIIa. But *specifically* the shutter *curtains* and rangefinder *mirrors* on the postwar LTM's have not, in *general*, stood the test of time as well as those on the earlier models. One need only check with a reputable Leica technician who services fair numbers of LTM's to substantiate this. This is *not* to imply that Leica knowingly used inferior materials. Most likely the materials they used for those components were tested as thoroughly as they could be in the 1940's and based on that, Leitz was genuinely convinced they were superior. Perhaps they *are* superior, in other respects, besides how they age. The ability to accurately predict the effects of 50 years of ageing on a particular substance is something which even now, with computers, is not always a certainty. DT