Re: [Leica] M6 J and a new M camera!

["usinet.srlond" <srlondon@ibm.net>]

>
>bad guess.  M's go on and on so long as they are properly serviced.
>their value ensures the owner will continue the necessary upkeep most of
>the time.    the other M's outnumber the M6 by roughly 4 to 1.     The
>only person I know who believes the M6 is as well constructed as the M4
>and before is Marc.   While he might be proved correct in the long run,
>he certainly seems to be in the minority opinion.
>
>Stephen Gandy

While your point is well taken, you also must consider that even though 
the M6 might account for a disproportionate number of repairs compared to 
the other M's, it is likely that the M6 is much more likely to be used 
merely because it is a newer camera.  While there might be x number of 
older M's, a portion are likely destroyed, another portion are collector 
cameras in glass cases (whose owners will not notice if their shutters 
are no longer accurate since their bodies are no longer graced with 
film), still more sit gathering dust in a closet, and so forth.  I 
wouldn't be more surprised if the number of M6's were only half to 
one-third the number of other M's in use today.

Another problem with the whole argument regarding M6 repair frequency is 
that the evidence is anecdotal.  From the sound of the original post, we 
are talking about how many times an M6 is on a repair person's table 
versus how many times other M's visit the shop.  That is misleading in 
itself, because how can you cite reliability data from repairs of 
indeterminate cause?  Maybe the shop in question was seeing a lot of M6's 
whose rangefinders didn't work because they were dropped out of moving 
cars or whose shutters stick because they had cat hair or coffee residue 
in them rather than genuine manufacturing defects?