[Leica] Intro

[feli2 at earthlink.net (Feli di Giorgio)]

On Jan 1, 2005, at 5:50 PM, Christopher Driggett wrote:

> I have dropped the D1 and D1h from walking heights onto concrete and 
> pavement and they survived. I am less confident of the D70. But I have 
> not held one so I will have to try it out(Not dropping one thought).  
> I am sorry to hear that  the M7 is not as robust. I thought that the 
> Leica range finders where a very hardy breed. How then is their 
> weather seals?
>
> Cheers,
> Chris

There are no weather seals, but then again there aren't a whole lot of 
entry points either...
But they seem to work in wet climates. PJ's used them all over Vietnam 
and Tina dropped her M6 in a river, dried it out and kept on shooting. 
Ted had a whole different experience involving bovine excretions, but 
that's an extreme example...

The M series is pretty tough and mechanically extremely reliable, but 
there's not a lot of padding if you drop it on concrete from any sort 
of height. Same goes for pretty much any other brass, mechanical 
camera. Obviously the most sensitive part of the camera is the 
rangefinder, which just like with any other camera of this type, can be 
knocked out of alignment by a severe blow.

But it depends. I had my M6TTL knocked out of my hand with a 90mm 
attached. It flew about 9ft and landed on the concrete floor of a movie 
theater. The result was a cracked body shell at the 12 o'clock position 
over the lens mount, where it is at it's thinnest.

On a different occasion I slipped on some wet metal plating and the 
camera went flying down the stairs and onto a cobblestone floor. The 
only damage were a few scrapes to the finish, but everything else was 
ok. I was in worse shape than the camera.

The oldest M cameras (M2/3) have their finder prisms blocks glued 
together with Canadian balsam. Now 40 years old, the glue can become 
brittle and a serious knock MAY cause
them to separate, but that's a whole different story.


feli




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