[Leica] M9 sensor, 35mm frame lines

[Herbert Kanner]

Yesterday I was using an Eclipse kit to clean my M9 sensor. After going through three of my four remaining swabs and the routine of shooting the blue sky and again inspecting the result in LR, I bit the bullet and had Keeble and Shuchat do a $60 cleaning; they also use Eclipse. 

They phoned me this morning to say that there was some permanent strange stuff at the bottom of the sensor. I told them to ship it to Leica. They said “no charge” for the cleaning.

I went back and looked at the sky image in LR. I had been methodically scanning in the Develop Module and didn’t realize that I had missed a very narrow band at the bottom. It was a virtual rainbow of colored dots. Had I seen that, I wouldn’t have even started the repeat cleaning.

I don’t see much sense in having Leica replace the sensor with another one that will do the same thing. I’ll probably accept whatever offer they make for an M and will put my spare (Leica) M9 battery up for sale.

I do have a question about Eclipse cleaning. The previous time that I cleaned my sensor, I did exactly what the Eclipse video shows: go across the sensor in one direction, return in the other direction, and you’re done. If a repeat treatment is needed, new swab. What about carefully returning the swab to it’s plastic envelope and re-using it for the next try? What say, Richard Man? What do you do?

Finally I want to mention another thing that surprised me. Because the 35mm pre-ash Summicron is usually in the camera, it was hard to photograph sky without a roof top or a tree getting in the picture. So, I would take two shots, one where I was sure the the objects on the right were not in the frame and one with the left side supposedly clear. What I discovered was that a hell of a lot of space outside of the frame lines get in the picture. This ordinarily wouldn’t bother me; I do my framing (cropping) in LR. But it surprised me, considering Leica’s claims for accuracy.

I finally did what I should have done in the first place (no brains at all), and used my 90mm lens for sky shooting.

Herbert Kanner
kanner at acm.org
650-326-8204

Question authority and the authorities will question you.