[Leica] Visit to Rapidwinder Conglomerate

[Stephen Gandy <leicanikon@earthlink.net>]

I just returned to LA from a weekend visit with Tom & Tuulikki
Abrahamsson and the Rapidwinder Conglomerate Industrial Park Complex.

By far the most important thing is saw is that Tom is in great spirits,
and doing very well indeed under his trying medical circumstances.  Tom
is not very good at being a sickie -- often forgetting in the discussion
of the moment the cane he needs to walk about  right now, an attitude I
think will only help him recover that more quickly.

I photographed  Tom's interesting menagerie of unusual cameras, mostly
Leica M's of course. Black paints seemed common, as well as unusual
custom paint jobs like his Jerry Garcia "Purple Haze" special and a gray
hammertone M2 with obligatory matching Rapidwinder. Tom admitted getting
caught up in the world's excitement as endless  new Leica cameras
commemorating almost anything under the sun  happily  greet collector's
shelves, and decided to add a few of his own.  His assortment of lever
rewind attachments for the M3/M2 from different manufacturers had more
varieties that I had ever seen before.   In time Tom's non collection
(he makes a point of saying that he does not collect cameras, he only
uses them)  will have a page at CameraQuest.    Also a future page will
be the "Collector's Guide to Rapidwinders" showing the original brass Ur
Rapidwinder, various prototypes, and the many of the  finish
variations.   I saw a rack of about 50 Rapidwinder cases awaiting
completion in five or so different finishes.     I happened to be there
on the 3rd anniversary of the Soft Release.  It turns out about 30
different varieties have been produced... a fact sure to drive up prices
in future soft release Ebay bidding frenzies.

One of the weekend's little discoveries is that the  the new Cosina
Voigtlander M mount Bessa T  works just fine with the Visoflex III --
IF you add Tom's soft release to  fill the gap between the shutter
release and the drop of the release arm,  WITHOUT  any sort of
modification to the release arm.    With Visoflex bellows and closeups,
this TTL metering combination makes a lot of sense with the easy to see
LED readout on the back edge of the top plate, making  for a very
practical Viso outfit.

The rigorously maintained low key Vancouver camera scene features rather
regular meetings of the non camera club at  local coffee shops --  where
everyone diligently insists upon having a good time .    Considering
Tom's Leica background, I found it pretty funny that my best shot over
the weekend showed Tom broadly smiling  holding a Nikon SP  -  hmmm..
maybe there's hope for a Nikon SP Rapidwinder after all... probably not,
but only Tom knows for sure.

Stephen Gandy