Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/02/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The Leica M is a remarkably solid camera. I have dropped them, stepped on them, hit doors (car doors are the main culprit), punched out the windshield of a Ford with a Noctilux/M6 combo (fixed the sticky sliding hood on the Noctilux, it worked much better after that). There is no rhyme and reason when the rangefinder goes out. A small fall from a table on to a carpeted floor can knock the rangefinder out, while a drop down a flight of stairs might rearrange the controls on the camera, but leave the rangefinder intact! Any knock on the short end of the housing is most likely to knock the rangefinder out, while direct hits on the top-plate or baseplate leaves it unaffected. A friend of mine slammed the door on his car over his M4-2. The Rapidwinder had a nasty dent in it and the top-plate had a creative crease across the top. Rangefinder remained perfect and the rewind crank could be bent back with a pair of pliers. The cardoor was bent sufficiently to create a whistling sound when driven! If you baby your M's, you loose too many shots! My biggest problem is not rangefinders being whacked out of alignment, it is the rewind cranks on M4's and later cameras (until the Millenium M6) being bent or jammed. Maybe there is a market for a high strength rewind crank for the M6 or even the extended, knurled one that's on the NASA M4's. Tom A