[Leica] Contarex Chatter

[Javier Perez <japho@cunyvm.cuny.edu>]

I received a Crex in the mail today. The Planar was as bad as the guy said
but the body, an E-spec bullseye was in better shape but told a story of design
stupidity in my opinion. The guy at the shop say that the second curtain was at an
angle and
not closing up on the second on windup and concluded quite reasonably that on of
the
shutter tapes had snapped. I took the back-bottom cover off and found that once
both
tapes were back on their rollers the curtain was right on the money. Fired it off
a few
times and noticed that the first curtain was having trouble landing every once
every
few clicks. I investigated further and noticed that the mirror damper assembly had
come loose
and was knocking into the 1st curtain take up roller. Ok simple enough I thought.
Just tighten screws and everything will be fine. Nope, as it turns the damping
assembly was on rubber mounting blocks that had detatched when the adhesive dried
out.
    Now the stupid part. I can understand that they might have wanted to further
isolate the damper by mounting it flexibly. But couldn't they have spent a few
more cents and married the thing to the chassis via screwed on coaxial dampers?
Why take something built like an optical King Tiger, meant to be a continuation of
blitzkreig by other means, and handicap it with a deficiency like this! Anyway I
relglued the rubber blocks with Devcon, not contact cement as they did and it
should be ok for the next 150 years. Still, I will never understand the mentality
of designers. I still haven't decided which reflex camera is the best built in
history, but am now beginning to lean towards any variant of the Leicaflex. I
doubt that the then still new Leicaflex was fully considered when the World's top
techs voted the Contarex King. The LF is generally better thought out and it
doesn't have age induced STUPID problems. Interchangeable backs would
have been nice though.

Javier