re: [Leica] The CL

[Godfrey DiGiorgi <ramarren@bayarea.net>]

>I have to say that the CL's lens produced the usual, magical
>results: the photographs of these two lovely young women are just
>delightful, they're going to like them a lot. I am very impressed
>with the details that they were able to render on the jets as
>they flew overhead too ... pretty darn good for a 40mm lens, the
>image of a jet at the altitudes they're flying was only about 3mm
>long on film.
>--A LUG Colleague

Um, I wrote that, not this "A LUG Colleague" guy... ;)

And there's an error in it... the images of the planes are not 3mm on
film, they're 1/3-1/2 mm on film! A remarkable amount of structure is
visible in them given that tiny amount of film! That's a good, sharp lens.

>The CL is the most underrated camera ever made. Folks who have
>problems loading film into the CL are usually people who don't
>use it often. The 40mm lens native to the CL is equal to the
>Summicron 50mm in my experience. I often run it on my M3 with
>excellent results. That is the most compact and potent combo I've
>ever used.

I've been using the CL almost exclusively for 2 months, shot about 27
rolls of film with it in this time, and I have to disagree about the
loading. It's a fussy little bugger to load, far fussier than the Leica M4
and up. And I'm not complaining about the need to remove the back - I did
that for years on my Nikon F and still do it all the time with Rollei 35s.
In fact The CL's film loading is very similar overall to the Rollei 35,
with its swing down pressure plate. But for whatever reason, I'd say I
miss on loading it about 40% of the time, where I have never, ever missed
loading the Rollei 35. The friction-driven take up spool in the CL just
doesn't grab the film as effectively as the slotted take up spool in the
Rollei 35.

In all the other ways, it's a delightful camera and I'm going to miss it.

Godfrey