[Leica] System Compatibility and Equipment Reliability

[Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>]

My M6 acted up the other night;  during a Candidate's Night, I got a roll
of relatively mis-exposed shots with the only good ones the ones I had
guesstimated when I began to distrust the meter readings.  So, I gave my M6
a workout and recalled that infinity focus was off a tad as well.  So, down
the street to the Repair Dude ("Tom In The Attic", they call him at the
store) went the M6 for a tweaking.  I suspect the meter problem is a weak
battery and the RF adjustment should be a snap.

Understand, pray, that this is a 1986, very late Wetzlar, M6.  It was in
the shop, in New Jersey, in 1994, for a CLA (when Leica upgraded the meter
without telling the then-owner), immediately before I purchased it.  This
camera has been in the hands of the repair folks TWICE in its fifteen years
of life.  (And, buckaroos, I am NOT an easy owner of cameras.  They get no
reverence from this lad -- this guy has been my main camera for seven years
without the slightest groan of protest despite my tendency to toss it into
the back seat of my car, to use it in rain and ice, to pound nails if no
hammer is at hand, und so weiter.  I do not intentionally abuse the darling
but neither do I baby the lass.)

So much for tales of gloom and doom and despair about Leica quality.  This
is the photographic equivalent of the brick shit-house.  The Evil Wolf
could never blow this sucker away!  (I have a Rolleiflex Automat which is
on its second visit in three years to Harry Fleenor though, admittedly, I
have given treatment on par with the treatment my M6 has endured to my 2.8F
and 2.8GX and, again, these puppies haven't groaned a single whimper or
whinged a whinge for the duration of their time in Purgatory.)

For the period while my M6 will be visiting Tom In The Attic, I pulled out
my M3 DS and swapped the Tom Abrahamson Soft Release onto the older camera
and switched the wide Leica strap.  System compatibility is a wonderful
thing, so the only problem I had was going through a stack of old PX625's
to find a good one for the MR meter.  (I was surprised to discover that
only half of the stack were dead.)  I was back and running in ten minutes
and had the camera delivered for inspection and attention to Tom in fifteen
more minutes.  The only delay was in convincing the manager of the store
that my new wife hadn't run off yet.  ("Are you still married?"  "Well, she
DID kiss me good-bye this morning."  "She might have meant that as a REAL
'good-bye kiss'."  "She left her dog."  "Hot damn!  She'll be back!")

I do love Leica M's!

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir!

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