Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/01/02

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Subject: [Leica] Horrors! Falling Leicas!
From: msmall at aya.yale.edu (Marc James Small)
Date: Sun Jan 2 13:22:57 2005

At 08:53 AM 1/2/05 -0500, dnygr wrote:
>I have dropped my M on two occasions and had mixed results. The first time
I dropped it from about a height of 5 feet. Fortunetly, I got my footout
and managed to break the force of the all with my boot. Result: No damage.
>
>The second time I dropped it from a height of six feet. I had hit the
camera in a closet while I had gone to supper in Germany with friends. When
I came back, I forgot that I had placed the camera in closet. When i pulled
something off the top shelt, I heard this heavy thud. It sounded like a
rock had hit the floor. It was my M with a 28mm on it. It seemed okay. 


Back when I had a very early M3, I seemed to routinely drop it from a
height of two or three feet onto concrete.  This never seemed to affect it
at all save for the battle scars on its exterior.  I later sold the camera
for a hell of a profit and spent a decade without an M3, though I bought
one four or five years back which, again, I have dropped onto a hard floor
twice and, again, it works well.

I have never performed the bounce test on my M6, IIIc, IIIf RD or IIIg, but
I'd suspect that these would be as impervious to damage from inadvertent
gravity tests as is the M3.

WEAR A STRAP AROUND YOUR NECK and you will never have these questions come 
up!

And, yes, Leicas are tougher than we are, however tough we may be.  These
are REAL cameras for real people.  I cheerfully admit that I am a soft-sell
type and that my Leicas and Rolleis are tougher than I am.

There is a magnificent story in one of the LEICA PHOTOGRAPHY journals (not
that faux-elite "Leica Photographie" weeny-journal) early in the 1960's
about a sky-diver who lost hold of his M3 (or was it an M2?  It does not
matter, given the similarity in the two of them) and, after he landed
(softly, I must point out), he walked over, picked up the Leica, and found
that the RF was not functional but nonetheless shot the remainder of the
roll at guess-focus and all was well:  he only needed a RF prism assembly
and his camera was back and running.

That reminds me of the sickening thud I heard seven years back when my
Questar telescope somehow failed to make contact with a Bogen tripod
matching plate and fell four feet onto asphalt.  It still works, off
course, without a problem other than a ding on the outside on the case.
Quality is, after all, worth the price of admission, and that is why we pay
the freight.

Marc

msmall@infionline.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!




Replies: Reply from douglas.sharp at gmx.de (Douglas M. Sharp) ([Leica] Horrors! Falling Leicas!)
Reply from alaxsxaq at gmail.com (Glenn Stauffer) ([Leica] Horrors! Falling Leicas!)
In reply to: Message from dnygr at cshore.com (dnygr) ([Leica] Dropping Ms)