I have noticed that the shutter releases on my older M's (M2 & M3) are significantly smoother than on my M6. Is this simply a characteristic of the older M's, or does the shutter release soften with age?

-- Dennis Couvillion (couvilaw@aol.com), November 15, 2001

Answers

Brian Bower in his book on the M, says that the difference in feel comes frm the fact the M6 shutter release is made to travel further because it has to have a space to only activate the meter about halfway down. Since the older Ms do not have a meter, the shutter release was made to travel a shorter distance to fire the shutter and you get a quick smoother shutter release. When I read that, I compared my M2 to my M6. Wow, there is quite a difference to the touch, the older camera release is fast and smooth but you can feel the shutter release of the 6 passing through the meter switch area. Frankly, had I not read it, I doubt I would have realized it.

-- Bob Haight (rhaigh5748@aol.com), November 15, 2001.

You can adjust the shutter release travel to make it shorter. I have done this on my M6 and it has almost no travel before it fires. The meter on this particular camera activates with only the very slightest depression. I'm not sure whether this is the case on all M6's.

The adjustment to the shutter travel is not for the faint hearted as it involes removing the bottom plate (the one with the film loading diagram on it) and adjusting a leaf spring. However it makes the M6 a lot nicer use especially with the new motor drive.

-- sam smith (Ruy_Lopez@hotmail.com), November 15, 2001.

I concur with Sam - the shorter the shutter button travel, the smoother the ride when using the M motordrive. This is why I use the motor with the no-meter M4-P rather than the M6 (which instead has a Rapidwinder).

-- Andrew Nemeth (azn@nemeng.com), November 15, 2001.

As mentioned above, I think the difference is due to the metering stop on the M6. You can use a soft release to make the action more gentle and easy to control--especially nice on an M6. Also, your camera service person can adjust the release point the next time you get a CLA. My impression is that the M3's win for most smooth and gentle release, with M2's close behind, but that may be just my sampling-- their releases are probably mechanically very similar or identical.

-- Tim Nelson (timothy.nelson@yale.edu), November 16, 2001.