Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/12/24
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I think that Henning Wulff is on - I have a 1967 Autoreflex T my dad bought
in Vietnam that shot tens of thousands of pictures (about 40K transparencies
- - not bad for an attorney on vacation). I got it when I was 13 in 1986 when
he switched to Nikon (waited a long time to get a Leica M and ultimately
decided he didn't like it). I have shot it for the past 13 years and it has
had no failures, even when (1) I dropped it off a park bench onto cement
(landed right on its baseplate) and (2) when I was screwing around with the
back open and caught my finger in the Copal Square S, jamming the shutter
open. I simply put one finger on each side of the top curtain, pulled it
down, and voila - worked perfectly and all speeds were on (except there was a
fingerprint on the shutter). I did have it CLAd in 1997, when the mirror foam
finally gave out. The repair man gave me a plastic bag of the dirt, loose
screws (2) and assorted grime that was inside the bottom cover. It was/is a
trooper of a camera.
Interestingly, as Henning probably knows, the Autoreflex and T bodies were
hand fitted because the castings were not high-enough tolerance until the
next generation. The lens mounts were all individually aligned at the factory
(so don't take them apart). The newer cameras up to the FT-1 had the film
rails ground to maintain the right film-flange distance. It is my
understanding that this is how Japanese cameras in general are built. And in
my experience the old Autoreflex T takes much better pictures (it may be the
fresnel dot instead of split-image prism).
In a message dated 12/24/99 12:56:35 PM, henningw@archiphoto.com writes:
<< At 11:11 AM +0100 12/24/99, Raimo Korhonen wrote:
>Hi!
>Obviously you have a tender touch because the film wind system is quite
>delicate. In the sixties I jammed one and when I got it back, repaired, it
>jammed again on the first roll. The guy I borrowed it from was not amused.
>Maybe it works well if you do not change format too often.
>All the best!
>Raimo
Tender Touch??? What a nice thing to say! It's not what I hear most of the
time.
Seriously, I've had a number of Konicas, used them hard, and never had one
single one ever fail me. During the same period of about 10 years, I had
Leicas which saw about 30% of the use and were into the shop for various
ailments about 10 times. Mind you, most of the Konicas were the T, T2 and
T3, which were notably rugged cameras (but not half frame).
* Henning J. Wulff
/|\ Wulff Photography & Design
/###\ mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
|[ ]| http://www.archiphoto.com
</XMP>
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Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 09:32:35 -0800
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
From: "Henning J. Wulff" <henningw@archiphoto.com>
Subject: Re: [Leica] Konica Autoreflex, was: Spin the ring
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