[Leica] Bouncing baby M6 TTL

[Simon Stevens <simon@camera-craftsman.com>]

This is long, but I have an excuse. Today I became the proud owner of a
new M6 TTL chrome 0.72 body to complement my ratty (but trusty) old
M4-P. This is the first time I have bought a brand new camera since I
got a Yashica FX-D when I was a teenager back in the early eighties, so
this was a big step.

I bought the camera from Dr. Joseph Yao in Hong Kong for a very nice
price with full Leica international warranty (2 years, not Passport.).
First a word about Dr. Yao. He is an amazingly helpful person - probably
too helpful for his own good given all the trouble I put him to. For
instance, I asked about getting a later serial number based on
discussions here about battery usage, and he got me the latest he had.
He also had a technician check the camera out before shipping without
being asked and he was even polite with my impatience when USPS took
their sweet time delivering it. Now that's service!

By the way, someone asked about duty on imported cameras to the US. The
customs service has a web site that lists all the duty categories, but
cameras for the most part are 0%. That was the case here so while I will
have to pay Virginia for 4.5% use tax, there wasn't any duty.

My first impressions about the camera are very positive. I love the
chrome finish, which is hugely ironic because once upon a time when I
was young and (more) dumb I sold an M4 (which I had aquired wheeling and
dealing for lenses) partly because I didn't like the chrome look. Tastes
change I guess. Anyway, to me the chrome finish is handsome and the
camera is all I would expect. One interesting thing is it makes a
different noise to my recently-serviced (by Leica)  M4-P. That one goes
"chick" but the M6 goes "chock." Trivial, but strange to me.

I can see already that it's going to take me a while to get used to
having a built-in reflected meter. I have been using incident meters
exclusively for 15 years or so and I have forgotten how to look for the
right tone to meter off of and consequently in my tests I was about a
stop off each time.  It's not the meter, it's me. I did a careful check
with another reflected meter of known accuracy using a plain wall as a
target and I got the same reading with both meters, so I just have to
learn to read with real scenes.

Other than a meter, I also got the camera for the new flash
capabilities, even though I know that's a crime with a Leica, but I hope
that LUGGERS will forgive me because I get paid to take those kind of
pictures at events. I took some with it tonight using my Quantum T2 with
the TTL adaptor. While it's nice not to have to worry about the
aperture, the biggest thing is the fact that it won't fire if the
shutter speed is too high. That is probably worth the TTL alone to me as
I have missed important shots with that error in the past and in fact it
was a recent embarassing incident with a politician that got me thinking
about the TTL in the first place. Another nice thing  is the Quantum
adaptor has a compensation dial on it. So assuming I can shoot at all
with the slow synch, if I want to do fill flash I can simply dial in the
amount I want in 1/3rd stop increments. Nice!

There is one problem with TTL flash I will have to solve and that is the
fact the adaptor uses up the accessory shoe. So where do I put the
finder if I use my Heliar? Maybe I can find a plastic accessory shoe to
glue on to the top of the adaptor, but that's a pretty ugly fix. Or I
could just leave the Heliar to the M4-P, but that's also clumsy when I'm
working. Any suggestions?

Simon Stevens