Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/11/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I should think the film has become brittle and breaks off into tiny pieces long before any of the electronics or lubricants have given up the ghost. Gene I've found that below about -30c down to - 42c my M6 quickly turns into nothing but a solid block of ice. Once it has been out at -30 for around say 30 minutes, the focus becomes progressively harder to use until the lubricant basically freezes solid (as was pointed out early once it gets to this stage, set it to hyperfocal distance). Much colder/longer and the rewind gets stiffer and the shutter begins to freeze up. I've got to the point where I've clicked the shutter and after a delay of a second or two I can here the shutter curtains slowly sliding along. By that time it's toast until it completely thaws out. The exposure LED's have usually died long before that. I've always found it pointless keeping it under a parka in those temperatures and just pulling it out to take pix. It collects all the moisture from you body then freezes when it comes out - as it is removed and replaced moisture and/or ice gradually builds up. (+ you gradually get colder from losing heat). Lugger John Poirier has a system of two parkas for those temps - a lighter one under a huge heavy one - the camera lives in between the two - never gets too warm or moist or too cold. Though he usually forsakes his M4-2 for a trusty old Pentax that just keeps on ticking. He also then looks like a large grumpy bear rolling along... :-) I would usually find my old OM1's kept going longer in the cold than the Leica M's - about 1 hr at around -35c rather than 20-30 minutes for the M's. Best of all is my old Nikon F4 with two sets of Lithium AA batteries. It has never ever completely froze up (neither did the lenses) and kept going for 3+ hours easily on one set of batteries, the others kept warm in an inner pocket and swapped over when one set eventually got cold. But it was basically the most reliable of the lot :-) tim _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information