[Leica] Thanks LUG/LEG!!

[TTAbrahams@aol.com]

 After posting on my illness, I have been receiving 100's of messages from 
fellow Leica-users cheering me on with support and information. Thank you all 
for your support and thoughts. It is an amazing feeling to hear from so many 
people and to know that we do care about other things than Hexar back-focus 
and filters too! My condition has slightly improved and I can negotiate 
stairs with certain alacrity and make it down to the local beach and 
Starbucks! Hey, this is the Westcoast after all, a Latte a day is an 
essential Vancouver ritual.
 I am still not strong enough to go into the workshop for grunt-work on 
winders, but that too will come. I have been fast-tracked for a bone-marrow 
transplant in Aug.-Sept. and barring complications should be in far better 
shape for October. Interesting enough, the transplant takes place in one of 
those "plastic bubble" things. All sterile and dust-free for 2-3 weeks. I 
asked if I could bring an enlarger with me and do some printing, no spotting 
needed! I think they thought my request was one of the weirder ones!
 To go on topic: The more I use the 0,58 M6 the more I like it. The finder is 
the perfect 35mm/lens finder. No other frame-lines interfere and plenty of 
surround to catch subjects/objects wandering into the frame before they are 
there. Through a friend in Japan I also got that strange Pentax 43/1,9 Pentax 
LTM lens. Great finder with 43/50 frames in it and a substantial diopter 
control built in. The lens is the size of a 50/2 with a push/pull hood on it, 
a small focus tab. Focussing is smooth and high spot free. I am still not 
able to make it up the steep stairs to my darkroom - well, I can probably 
make it up, but gravity would affect the descent. Later I will install a 
rappelling rope for that trip. It is an interesting lens and obviously an 
extremely limited production. The highest # number I have seen on one of 
these is 089 in Tokyo (mine is 064) and rumor is that they are only making a 
100 or so of these in LTM mount. It is obviously available in the Pentax 
K-mount at a substantial discount from the LTM mount. I will let you know 
when I have some results from it.
 For some obscure reason all my latest lenses seem to fall in the f/1,9 
category, first the 28/1,9 Voigtlander (as they say on Wall Street, this is a 
BUY item), very sharp and contrasty and very comfortable to use. The Pentax 
43/1,9, weird focal length and judgement to be done later, I also got a 
50/1,9 Macro-Switar for the ALPA mount and it was sent to Japan yesterday for 
conversion to LTM/M mount (Retina-Shop in Tokyo is making a limited series of 
adapters for this conversion). I have seen the results from these conversions 
and once I get it back, I will test it out. Remember that the Macro-Switar is 
a true APO-chromatic lens and ALPA handpicked this lens from the Switar 
production line at the time of production. Can't wait to test this one with 
the last of my APX-25. 
 Once again, thank you all for your support and concern and as you probably 
can see, I am getting back to do more of what I really like to do. Taking 
pictures, playing with cameras, and even thinking about 
Rapidwinders/Rapidgrips/Softreleases and other stuff. So, even though the 
selection of subjects is limited to 4-500 feet walks, there is a beach across 
the road where bodies are lined up in the blazing sun (1/500-f22 with Tri-X), 
dogs and kids playing and interminable beach volley ball tournaments going 
on. At least there are subjects en galore. At the moment, the film is piling 
up in the fridge, awaiting processing and said rappelling rope.
All the best,
Tom A

Tom Abrahamsson
Vancouver, BC
Canada
www.rapidwinder.com