Someone (forgot who ! ) recommended a technique to supress the rewind noise of the new M motor drive .

Basically hold down the shutter button to keep it from rewinding until you decide to let it go.

Will this damage the motor, the camera or will it be harmless ? I was wondering whether the motor will burn out or a gear would strip as this technique may not be a design feature.

I am interested because the instant uptake by the motor causes the shutter release to rise and causes some "shake". But holding the release "forcefully " down a little longer seems to steady the frame.

-- Yip (koklok@krdl.org.sg), August 13, 2001

Answers

I believe that by the time the motor winds the shutter, the second curtain has already travelled so any shake will not affect the image. It is more likely to impact the second or subsequent images in a sequence of shots.

I certainly wouldn't want to restrain a motor from winding, but as I understand it the original winders were designed to operate in this way anyway, so maybe it's no problem.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), August 13, 2001.

Not sure either, but as Rob stated the second curtain has already closed, so there is little worry of excess shake. I think I remeber reading that there was a built-in circuit breaker to alleviate any concerns about burning up the motor, but a better solution might be to turn the motor off and revert to manually winding when you want to be in stealth mode. I have found for me that at the 1.5 fps setting the wind-noise is not much different than me winding manually and subjects do not seem to take any particular notice (other than the normal "cool camera!" comment :-) ). But yes, it is noisy at the 3 fps setting.

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), August 13, 2001.

Yip, are we talking about rewinding, or just winding on? I didn't quite realize you could rewind with the motor drive. Stalling an electric motor causes it to draw a lot more current than a running motor, and thus more heat is dissipated. So it would depend in part on whether the circuit is completed to the motor when the button is down. I think this is something to find out. Of course, if it does heat up, then a number of other variables come into play, like the duty cycle (how long you hold the button down, vs. how long an interval between these events) and even the ambient temperature. I seem to recall that the Leica website has a "contact us" feature. I tried it once, but never got an answer. Still might be worth a try. Oh, and if the motor stays energized, it could run your batteries down.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), August 13, 2001.

I'm confused too. I thought you'd hold down the shutter release button if you wanted to take a sequence of shots. Maybe you mean not letting the release button bounce up?

-- Ray Moth (ray_moth@yahoo.com), January 07, 2002.