Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/07/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]After hearing all the stories about Leicas being hard to load, I was pleasantly surprised the first time I loaded my newly acquired M6 TTL. I went about it sort of gingerly on the dining room table, not being quite convinced that the little three-fingered fork in the take-up region would really grab the film so that it would engage the sprocket--there gotta be a sprocket, otherwise I wouldn't find such incredibly accurately sized gaps between frames. Quite a few times, I've reloaded a camera while walking down the street. The time that stick in my memory was doing it with a Rollei 35S, the removable back dangling from a neck strap while the rest of the camera was in hand. Today, I decided to test the M6 in this mode. Let it hang upside down from the neck strap, tossed the film in, replace the bottom plate--done. I decided it must be the easiest camera to load that I've ever owned. So now, I come to my question. In the first place, did all of the M series cameras have the hinged section of the back? If not, and, particularly in the case of the screw mount cameras, how hard was it to force the film by the pressure plate? Was the bottom edge of the pressure plate chamfered to ease this process? Herb - -- Herbert Kanner kanner@acm.org 650-326-8204