Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/12/07
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hello, I'm now following the leica-users-digest for more than one year and was always only a reader. But the latest dicussion about batteries for the M6 makes me being astonished and forces me to respond. When listening people talking about problems with the M6 and batteries, I always have to remember the disastrous experiences I had with the exposure meter of my M6. In the german manual (until 1997; 13years!) for the M6 you could read, that the meter always give correct exposure when there is enough power to illuminate the LED's. The truth is, when a Lithium cell is going to its end, there is enough power to ligth the LED's but the EV was (in my case) 3 EV and more overexposed. This effect lasts not only for a short periode because it took over 100 exposuses on Kodachrome at my father's 85 birthday in connection with 125th anniversary (can anyone imagine how happy I was. btw: spare batterie is always present) to make me skeptical. The same cell was also good enough for a lot of demonstrations for me, I couldn't believe it, and the Leica-marketing-manager (Mr. P. Fischer) at product presentation. He had no knowledge about that effect and asked me to contakt Mr. S. Peters the product-manager for the M-system to get a competent explanation. So I did, but got no answer! After four weeks I called him to ask about the problem and he told me that Leica knows about that failure (also pro's criticized it) and he first want to speak with the technicans. He promised me to recall. No answer! Another four weeks later I sent him a fax to ask for news. No answer! More than four weeks later I contacted a german magazine for naturefotografy to ask for publishing a letter in the readers corner. A few days later I had an answer in my hands. He thanked for the constructive criticism and wrote that Leica has modified the M6-manual (and they did, but nothing else). Not even any word like sorry! That's not the end of the bad story, but I think it's enough now. Best regards Berthold