[rollei_list] Re: Re : Difficult To Load?

  • From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:46:15 -0400

At 03:29 PM 7/20/2010, Allen Zak wrote:

>
>Then I must have lucked into an M4 made on a Wednesday by a shift whose
>wives had been kind to them the night before.  My Leica never
>malfunctioned or missed a beat.  I also had an M2 and later, an M42,
>both of which also were well behaved.  Actually, the Leicas I preferred
>were the SMs.  At various times those were the IIIA, C, F and G models,
>one or another which I used for more than a decade.  They were only
>practical for use with a 50 mm lens, no problem for me, since that was
>how I liked to frame the world then.  When lens interchangeability
>became a professional necessity, I went to the Ms which frankly, I
>didn't like as well.  Repairs were seldom necessary, nor were there
>serious problems loading them, but I still preferred the three pronged
>devil.

In 1950, German industry was offered a tax break if they hired war-wounded WWII vets, and Leitz took full advantage of that. This was the workforce on which the epic reputation for quality Lieca cameras was made -- and they retired in 1965, a year before the M4 was introduced. So, the M4's were built by a far more lackadaisacal proletariat than had been the M2 and M3 cameras. And you really need to take an M3 apart and then take apart an M4. EVERYTHING on an M4 is adjustable, which means that there is ALWAYS something out of adjustment. Leitz acknowledged the error of their ways by shifting in the M6 to go/no-go parts, a much wiser idea.

M4 Leicas, according to the factory, had a rangefinder failure rate about six times as high as that of the M2. This led to a complete redesign for the M42, and most M4's have now been retrofitted with the improved prism assembly.

They say that if a man lives long enough, he will contract prostate cancer. Well, if you use an M4 enough, you are bound to suffer catastrophic failure, with nuts and bolts and odd-sized springs flying out into the ozone. Again, I tried and tried and tried to like the M4 but the constant breakdowns from cameras just back from service cured me -- until one of the Leica repair guys suggested, privately, that I go back to the M3.

Finally, I do not believe Leica ever made a sado-masochistic camera, though Peter K will disagree. The preferred brevity code is "LTM" for Leica Thread-Mount. I am rather partial to the term as I developed it. <he grins>

Marc


msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!

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