[Leica] A Tale of a Few Jolts

[John Collier <jbcollier@home.com>]

I bought my TTL new last spring and it had to have its rangefinder realigned
a few short weeks later. It was in the backseat of the car beside our son's
diaper bag. My daughter, always looking for ways to help, grabbed the diaper
bag and tossed it onto the pavement. A VERY solid hit, probably would have
knocked me out cold had it hit me rather than the pavement. The camera now
has character and the distributor quickly did the adjustment under the
passport warranty.

My camera lives on me and is constantly getting bumped and nudged as I
waddle my way through life. This weekend I was bending down to pick
something up and it slid off my shoulder, did the 9.8m per second squared
thing and smacked into the side of a solid box with a loud retort and a foul
cry from my usually dulcet toned voice. No problems except my son has
expanded his vocabulary somewhat.

A year or so ago I, in a fit of madness, handed my M2 to my daughter while I
did some son maintenance. When I turned around, startled by a loud noise,
the camera had hit the tile floor so hard that the securely fastened lens
had popped off. No problems. Similarly a year or so before the twinkle in my
eye was planted, I dropped my M2 onto another tile floor. Again, no
problems.

I feel that as long as you avoid my daughter, and, do not let me handle your
camera over a tile floor, it should hold up just fine.

Finally, I must say that my daughter is recovering nicely and should be
almost 80% of normal by the time they let me out...... :-)

John Collier

> From: Tristan Tom <Tristan@TristanTom.COM>
> 
> How big of a jolt does it take to knock the Leica rangefinder out of
> alignment? Dop they just go out with time and normal usage?  I'm just
> curious how careful I need to be with it. I've already knocked it
> around a bit, things like accidentally bumping it on walls while it's
> on my shoulder, etc..I don't notice anything abnormal when I look in
> the viewfinder as of yet and I want to keep it that way..
>