[Leica] M6 rangefinder flare - the Solms response

["Doug Richardson" <doug@meditor.demon.co.uk>]

John Brownlow <deadman@jukebox.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>Incidentally, my M4-P and M2 both show rf flare to a certain extent.
The
M4-P is worse than the M2. The idea that this problem is confined to
the M6
is, in my humble experience, wrong.

And, indeed, the gentleman speaks the truth. All M rangefinders
exhibit some tendency to flare, and some are more vulnerable than
others.


However, Martin Howard <howard.390@osu.edu> wrote:

>I've shot extensively with an M2's and never had any
problem with RF patch flare. OTOH, I find I'm constantly having to
reposition my eye to eliminate the flare in the M6 VF. Can't comment
on the
M4-P.

And John Collier <jbcollier@home.com> added:

>Both my M2 and M4-2 will flare out in certain situations and reducing
the light through the frame-line illumination window solves the
problem.


That’s been my experience. A week or so ago, I was photographing in
the British Museum, the sort of environment where the M6 rangefinder
is very prone to 'white-out' with flare. Since yet another fault has
recently been diagnosed on my M6, I used an M2. This 40 year old
camera coped easily. Its rangefinder can be made to flare, if I really
try to catch it out by shooting directly into bright light, but for
most practical purposes I have found it to be flare-free.

Some people have posted suggestions that the degree of flare in the M6
can be reduced by careful adjustment of the finder optics. Last week I
was at Solms, and raised this question with the service department.
The service guy’s reply (via a translator) was that it's a known
problem, and there is nothing that can be done in the way of
adjustments to reduce it. When I mentioned that my M2 was virtually
flare-free, the response was that the older cameras have a different
finder system, but the design had been changed to accommodate the
metering diodes.

What I should do, he suggested, was to carefully move my eye position
until I could find a location where the RF patch would be clearer. The
fact that Solms considered this a practical work-around struck me as
sad. I found myself thinking of the film sequence which shows
Cartier-Bresson shooting in the street with a screw-mount Leica and
taking only moments to get into position, take the photo, and go. In
their work-around, the concept of the ‘decisive moment’ has given way
to the ‘decisive eyeball position’!

Regards,

Doug Richardson