Looking through a contemporaneous thread, I see that Leica often offers bodies such as the M6J with M3 face and topplate (except for winder) and the M6 millenium with the M3 style rewind. What gives? Does Leica still have a huge stock of top and faceplates, or the tooling from days of old to turn out these at whim? Is the modern M6 easily spiffed up with some of these old time features if you ask for them? Could Leica easily switch the M6 production to M6Js at little extra cost, if it so deemed?

This question has no photographic relevance, and likely only of interest to collectors (I'm not one, and alas, too poor to be one even if I wanted to be)? But one wonders, just the same.

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), November 07, 2001

Answers

Mani, Realize that the internal workings of all the special issue M6's you noted are the same as a regular M6. What distinguishes one from a regular production M6 is cosmetic. In the case of the M6J, a new top plate was manufactured and a new viewfinder was designed (a viewfinder that was eventually put into regular production, albeit with different frameline masks) and an old lens redesigned (also put into production). So the only cost incurred not amortized over long-term production is the top plate. Same too with the M6 millenium. When you consider the premium paid for the M6J and the millenium model, the cost was probably easily recovered by Leica and a handsome profit made.

-- Henry Chu (heninden@yahoo.com), November 07, 2001.

Usually, the special editions top plates are made of brass instead of zinc.

This was the case with the M6J, M6 Titanium, Millenium, LHSA etc..

The Millenium and LHSA were CNC machined.

-- Lucien (lucien_vd@yahoo.fr), November 07, 2001.

I keep seeing references lately to CNC. Let's see . . . Computer . . . something? Maybe something like CAD/CAM (Computer Assisted Design/Machining?

I saw a picture of a nostalgia M6 in black paint with an old M2/M3 pullup rewind. It looked neat. But using my M2 on vacation; I thought, "Do we really want to go back to those? Is it really so great?" I found myself being impatient waiting for the rewinding to come to an end. I would be OK with the old-style winding lever; but the canted rewind crank was a necessary improvement.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), November 07, 2001.

Anything that is out of the ordinary complicates manufacturing, slowing down yields and wasting time changing over. Probably not as much as the mass produced cameras from the large companies but still a pain to do. The price differential of short run quantities of anything like a top plate can be huge and new molds or dies are very expensive if not amortized over large quantities. Even the printing of the packaging material is expensive for small quantitities. I'm not justifying the price difference, just suggesting some considerations.

-- D. Chan (deezer@juno.com), November 07, 2001.

Slightly off threaad, but..

CNC=Computer Numerically Controlled. These new metalworking machines allow very complex machining operations that are impossible to do by hand. They also allow grinding of lens blanks into aspheric shapes.

Cheers

-- RICHRRD ILOMAKI (richard.ilomaki@hotmail.com), November 07, 2001.