Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]As the recent repostings of Mr. Scheele’s exchange of letters with Solms on the subject of M6 rangefinder flare show, the factory sees this as an unavoidable problem due to the way the finder system was re-designed to accommodate the metering LEDs. Yet our discussions on the LUG suggest that while some folk are plagued with this problem, others never see it. I don’t believe this can be due to different styles of photography - someone like Ted Grant has probably dropped more pics in the reject pile than I’ve taken in my life, so have presumably used the M6 under every conceivable lighting condition, yet has apparently have noticed no problem with the rangefinder. Yet other Lugnuts have had so much trouble they have ended up selling their M6. The symptom for those of us who have the problem is that under some lighting conditions the rangefinder rectangle simply "whites out", becoming brightly lit to the point where the rectangle is a bright white colour and the split image is invisible. The problem seems to come when shooting against the light, or in scenes illuminated by spotlights. I do a lot of my photography at trade exhibitions, where I am often standing in front of a brightly-lit stand whose main source of illumination is high rail-mounted spotlights. My CL copes easily with these conditions, but when its shutter failed last fall and I switched to the M6, I found the latter very hard to use. At one point I wondered if the problem might be caused by light reflecting from the top surface of a chrome lens (the meter of the Mk1 Leicaflex had this problem, so Leitz adopted a black finish for reflex lenses). However, I’ve had bad rangefinder flare when using both black and chrome lenses. The best work-around I’ve found is to go back to using my M2 and IIIg - cameras built more than quarter of a century before the M6, and which have rangefinders which seem to work properly under virtually all lighting conditions. Luckily, my style of photography can tolerate the time delay caused by having to use an external meter. I’m going to be at Solms in April and will take the M6 with me and ask Leica to check the rangefinder. Perhaps this is partly a matter of how well the finder optics have been set up - that would explain why some folks have the problem and some don’t. I’ll post whatever I learn from them. I was interested to note that Bob Figlio had written that "the [M5] viewfinder is much, much better than that of the M6 - no flare nor hazy view." To the best of my knowledge, the M5 was the first model to depart from the M2/3/4 design of viewfinder/rangefinder and move to a configuration similar to that of the M6. I’m puzzled by the fact that so many people have reported that reducing the amount of light entering the frame-illumination window helps reduce flare. Looking at a diagram of the system it’s hard to see how light from this source can get into optical path of the rangefinder system. Regards, Doug Richardson