[Leica] Light leak in M6?

[pieter@world.std.com (Pieter Bras)]

Doug Richardson wrote:
>
>My M6 is making one of its rare appearances away from the Leica repair
>department, so I took it to the Paris Air Show as my working camera.
>
>Looking through the resulting photos, I'm puzzled to see that one just
>three of the 73, there is a blue haze and general washed-out look on
>the right-hand side of the frame.
>...
>All three of the pics in question were taken with a shade in place and
>either in the shade or with the sun behind me, so I don't think it's flare.
>The only other possibility I can think of is a light leak - but if that
>was the case I'd expect to see many more affected frames given that I
>had the camera around my neck and with the lens cap off for several
>hours outdoors, and had about half a dozen lens changes outdoors.
>
>Can anyone suggest an alternative reason for the problem?

My apologies for replying so late, but I recently spent several weeks in
Europe and am just catching up on some of the LUG backlog.  On my trip I
took an M4-P and three lenses.  (I'd planned to bring two bodies, but
had stupidly put the rangefinder of my other M4-P out of alignment by
mounting a 50 DR Summicron that wasn't set to focus at infinity.)

As a result, I wound up doing a lot of lens changing.  After I got the
pictures developed, I noticed what seemed to be huge areas of flare on
certain prints, similar to what is described above.  There were enough
of these cases to see that it was 100 percent correlated with lens
changes:  the problem only showed up in the first frame after a lens
change.  The appearance was identical with all three lenses (21/3.4 SA,
35/2 last non-asph, 50/2 DR).  It was more noticeable with the faster
film (PJ400).

The shutter curtains had recently been replaced by Sherry K. so that
shouldn't have been the problem.  Checking the M6 User's Guide (I have
the German edition) I found on page 5, under "Lens Dismounting" a
cautionary note:  when changing lenses, exposing the shutter to direct
sunlight can cause the film to become fogged.

Another case of RTFM, I guess.

- -- 
Pieter Bras