RE: [Leica] Leica M6 AE

[Austin Franklin <austin@darkroom.com>]

Hi,

If you have specific details, I would appreciate them.  I am specifically 
talking about the standard M6 NON-TTL metering system.  The issues involved 
are not more complex than I can 'imagine'.  If you have a component list, 
I'd even love to see that, or even a good photograph of the flex-circuits. 
 It's hardly top secret, since one could just take a camera apart and make 
the list for them self, and even reverse engineer the schematic, unless 
they decided to re-mark the ICs.  Even if they did that, it's still not 
that tough.

I find it hard to believe a simple meter system was designed with any 
exotic single sourced or custom ICs (and if it was, it shouldn't have 
been).  The meter system has four inputs, plus power.  Shutter button 
depressed, shutter speed dial, film speed dial, and the light sensor.  It's 
got two outputs, two LEDs.  I assume the aperture is taken into account by 
the light sensor.  It doesn't even have a low battery indicator.  Depending 
on the characteristics of the sensor electronics, they may have done some 
temperature compensation circuitry...not rocket science.

Austin

>Austin,

> I believe Peter was referring to me as the other party in his 
conversation.
> It might not sound right to you, but the issues are more complex than you
> imagine. German law requires spare parts and serviceability-over-time 
that
> would be abnormal in the USA. IC manufacturers require significant 
volumes,
> of which Leica are incapable. The inventory management processes used 
take
> all this and much more into account. When a manufacturer, for whatever
> reason, stops making money on a product (assuming they can detect that),
> unless there are good reasons, they cease production. This is only
> indirectly related to their customers' inventory of some of their 
purchased
> IC's being retained as spare parts, and not being used in production.

> I'd be happy to discuss this with you if you want more detail.

> best of light,

> Alistair

- -----Original Message-----

> He said that the reason for the TTL M6 wasn't so much TTL, but to
> justify the larger body that was needed to fit the electronics from the
R8.
> He said that the electronics for the M6 meter were no longer available
from
> the manufacturer and Leitz had no option but to use the R8 electronics
for
> the meter.

[Austin] I don't know that I believe that.  How are they going to repair
ALL the M6 non-TTL meters if they can't get any of the electronics?  I
doubt it is patented, and they certainly could just have someone else
'make' them, it isn't rocket science...  If some component went EOL (end of 
life) there would more than likely be an available replacement.  That juts
doesn't sound correct to me.

- ------------------------