Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/08/08

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Compact M Motor - smearing image LHS
From: George Day <george@rdcinteractive.com>
Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 05:45:00 +0000

Tradition be damned; I'd love to see this happen.  I had seriously
considered adding Hexars to ye olde line-up, until all the reports about
about focusing problems.
on 8/8/01 11:16 PM, Dante A. Stella at dante@umich.edu wrote:

> 
> Or the M6 needs to be designed around a high-speed coreless motor and a quartz
> shutter.  But I guess someone already did that.
> 
> John Collier wrote:
> 
>> The problem is not with the drive but with the camera. It needs to have
>> mechanism that allows the motor to move after the shutter has completed its
>> cycle, and, prevents the shutter from firing until it has finished winding,
>> adjusted. This is a very common problem which results in all sorts of
>> shenanigans: cameras locking up, uneven exposures, etc. The M camera needs
>> to be redesigned with a simple electric interlock rather than a mechanical
>> one.
>> 
>> John Collier
>> 
>>> From: Andrew Nemeth <azn@nemeng.com>
>>> 
>>> A while back I reported that motorised sequences taken with
>>> the new Compact M Motor would smear the left hand side of
>>> shots following #1 in the sequence.
>>> 
>>> Finally had some time to test this and can confirm that yes,
>>> it's a real problem at all shutter speeds when you have the
>>> motor set to the quiet(er) "I" setting.
>>> 
>>> What appears to happen is that the shutter opens prior to the
>>> low-tourque-wind film has fully coming to rest, resulting in
>>> the LHS side of the frame being motion blurred.  The proprortion
>>> of the frame ruined of course varies with the s/speed.  At 1/250th
>>> only @ 1/8th of the frame is ruined.  At 1/125th almost a third
>>> of the image gets smeared.
>>> 
>>> However, set the motor to the louder & faster "II" setting and
>>> the smearing is gone, at all s/speeds.  Here because there is
>>> no low-tourque monkeying about, the film is in place and
>>> stationary when the shutter curtain opens.
>>> 
>>> So the moral of the story is: use "I" for one-off frames and
>>> stick to "II" for sequences.
>>> 
>