Just ran across this at the 'other' Leica chat site. More substantive (if not more definitive). PLEASE keep track of who sed what - my comments are in [square] brackets. I don't mind getting flamed, but not for somebody else's words. 8^(

"I just got off the phone with Deep-Throat who HAS THE CAMERA IN HAND. It looks just like an M6 TTL until you look real close.

The shutter speed dial goes from 4 seconds to 1000th. [sigh - no shooting f/2 in sunlight. - Andy]

A line between 125/60 to indicate the two BATTERYLESS BACKUP SHUTTER SPEEDS. [emphasis added - more likely the ONE backup/sync speed of 1/100th - Andy]

DX which is over rideable on the back of the camera. A different film speed dial. [DX? What's that? 8^) - Andy] No DIN [german film speeds - Andy]. They'll be a din about that it's been gone for what? 3 decades?

A collar around the shutter release like on the F3 as an on/off switch. (A very good thing it sounds like to me) [applicable to mechanical M6? - Andy]

A longer shutter release throw. Probably as a method to freeze an exposure setting."

Hooo-hahh!

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), January 15, 2002

Answers

I know that people here will behead me for saying this but I think that it's rather cool that Leica is having their M6 improved to being on par with their R8 technology and also I would say that it's comparable to being like Leica's "Nikon F3HP" model. Aperture priority is good for photojournalist (and purist will cringe at that addition) dudes who need the speed of shooting quickly fast action or sports or scenes of panic, etc. etc. So in my opinion, Leica is taking a good step forward.

-- Alfie Wang (leica_phile@hotmail.com), January 15, 2002.

Oh I forgot to add to my previous comments. I believe that Leica should keep a Leica M6 available just as well as the M7. I think that they made a mistake when they phased out the R6.2 in favor of the R8 only. There still should be a mechanical (fully) version for the classic guys and the automatic version for high-speed Leica sports shooters and photojournalists out there :)

-- Alfie Wang (leica_phile@hotmail.com), January 15, 2002.

I'm not (yet) a Leica user, but am looking. Um, I'm sure this is Leica-heresy, but has anyone heard whether the film loading system (remove the bottom) is the same? So far, the only thing I've read (here and elsewhere) that might entice me to buy an M7 instead of an M6 TTL is the aperature priority operation. And that's probably not enough (for me) for the $1000 price difference (particularly if, as reported above, the highest shutter speed is still 1/1000th). But changing the film loading design might push me over the edge to the M7.

Just a question. I know there are some valid reasons for the current design (rigidity).

-- william carter (wmc@po.cwru.edu), January 15, 2002.

I saw this post on the LUG Andy. If this is in fact true, I just can't believe that Leica couldn't break the 1/1000th of a second barrier. I can't ever recall being hindered by only a one second long speed (4 seconds???), but I still want to use my great Leica lenses wide open in good light, so where are the 1/2000th and 1/4000th settings?

Oh well... maybe the M9 with crack that top end speed.

Maybe this is just another bit of disinformation.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), January 15, 2002.

Whatever. Who uses 4 seconds? Use Bulb and count...I agree with Al Smith. Seems Leica is backward on this one. If you need that buy an SLR.

And for William Carter: The film loading is just not an issue, I think with a little practice you might actually find it superior to "standard" loading SLR's or the Voightlander RF line. I wouldn't let the loading disuade you from getting a Leica.

-- jeff voorhees (debontekou@yahoo.com), January 15, 2002.

William,

The film loading on the M6 is a piece of cake. People stuff it up because they try to take too much care with it. Just drop the film in, put the bottom plate back on and away you go.

-- sam smith (Ruy_Lopez@hotmail.com), January 15, 2002.

Yes, I agree. Where are the 1/2000-1/8000 speeds? I guess that they haven't installed the electronically controlled shutter yet... about the 1 to 4 sec speeds, I never recall having to use those except once or twice in shooting. I would prefer to shoot using the B setting.

However, does anyone know why the Leica R8 goes up to 32 seconds? :) I don't have a clue unless you're using slow film in near darkness and large depth of field :)

-- Alfie Wang (leica_phile@hotmail.com), January 15, 2002.

Alfie, where have you been? You've missed some great discussions lately!

Yes, just what is the problem with loading a Leica, it is simple, quick(ish), and it works.

M7 - the excitment builds, but who the hell is "deep throat"?

-- Giles Poilu (giles@monpoilu.icom43.net), January 15, 2002.

Hi Giles,

I've been busy working on my first photo book and mounting the photos as we speak... :) I am greatly happy that they are coming out with the M7 because that means that M6 prices will drop (and they are fairly popular) as people upgrade to the M7. Right now I'm using the Leica CL, Voigtlander Bessa-R and T, and Leica R4 and got rid of the other stuff to the store or my collector's shelves.

I am back actually. I'm not engaged anymore because of my ex- fiancee's betrayal but that's irrevelant. I'm happy to talk about Leicas as a bachelor...

Thanks Giles for welcoming me back. Hopefully I will be forgiven.

-- Alfie Wang (leica_phile@hotmail.com), January 15, 2002.

Anybody heard of Yogi Berra?

-- jeff voorhees (debontekou@yahoo.com), January 15, 2002.

Only one or two people in the world know the identity of Deep Throat . . .

-- Preston Merchant (merchant@speakeasy.org), January 15, 2002.

Andy. I'm disappointed. Was looking for faster (NOT slower) shutter speeds and a considerably higher flash sync speed. Are you saying only one or two shutter speeds available if the battery fails? That seems like a step backward, since a batteryless M6 allows all shutter speeds in the current model. The price of progress?

-- Eliot (erosen@lij.edu), January 15, 2002.

Please enlighten us Preston.

Anyone got a link to the LUG thread?

-- Giles Poilu (giles@monpoilu.icom43.net), January 15, 2002.

Eliot, I guess presumably to offer AE the new M7 shutter must be electronic - hence the lack of back-up speeds.

Unless they have some sort of hybrid shutter a la the Nikon FM3?

-- Giles Poilu (giles@monpoilu.icom43.net), January 15, 2002.

Deep Throat was the code name, drawn from a porn movie, given to an informant during the Watergate scandal that drove Richard Nixon from the White House. The identity has never been revealed and the mystery has entered American lore.

You'll note the parallels to the development of the M7 . . .

-- Preston Merchant (merchant@speakeasy.org), January 15, 2002.

The link is at http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica- users/v21/msg11525.html if you're interested, Giles :)

-- Alfie Wang (leica_phile@hotmail.com), January 15, 2002.

Thanks, all.

-- Giles Poilu (giles@monpoilu.icom43.net), January 15, 2002.

This is a completely unsubstantiated rumor, but I once heard that Deep Throat was Alexander Haig. Maybe Bob Woodward owns a Leica...

-- jeff voorhees (debonetkou@yahoo.com), January 15, 2002.

No doubt Woodward uses the IIIF Sub-Miniature.

-- Preston Merchant (merchant@speakeasy.org), January 15, 2002.

Sounds like this new camera will kill the used market for the Minolta CLE.

I have a recommendation for Leica's ad campaign: "The New Leica M6TTL AE. It's the Least We Could Do."

-- Robert Schneider (rolopix@yahoo.com), January 15, 2002.

Robert:

I read your post 5 minutes ago and just stopped laughing enough to be able to type in "Good one!"

;) Cheers,

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), January 15, 2002.

Alfie, this IS the electronically controlled shutter! See? It doesn't work without batteries except at 1/100. Barnack is spinning in his grave! The Final Days are upon us!...

Actually, this isn't all that far off what I'd expected.

I think Leica COULD have squeezed in 1/2000th in a horizontal shutter (Nikon F2/F3, Canon F1, Leicaflexes did it).

But to get faster speeds than that, and faster than 1/90 or 1/100 for sync speed, you need a vertical shutter so the slit only has to travel 24mm instead of 36mm.

THAT means a shutter that won't fit in the shutter box space of the M body. Vertical shutters are roughly twice as tall as the M shutter unit, which is short and wide. Same goes for a hybrid FM3A shutter - the wrong shape for the current M body casting.

(Yes I know V'lander, Konica, and Contax put vertical shutters into roughly M-sized bodies - but they had clean sheets of paper to work with - they didn't have to allow for an existing viewfinder/rangefinder shape or an existing film wind/loading system.)

THAT means a whole new body build from scratch, with a whole new set of spare parts to catalog/warehouse. And even more bitching from the traditionalists. So they didn't do it.

Within the M body there is room only for an F3 type shutter (with cloth curtains 'sted titanium). My guess is they held the top speed to 1/1000 to keep it quiet. The again this is probably a prototype (think what THOSE will be worth if collectors get aholt of 'em!) So the production camera MAY have added 1/2000th by the time PMA rolls around (6 weeks and counting down...)

On the other hand, this probably DOES represent an increase in the top speed for LEICA! - a true electronically-timed 1/1000th second instead of the 1/700th you actually get with the mechanical shutter. 8^)

I'm surprised after all the gripes here that no one is cheering the inclusion of a real ON/OFF switch separate from the shutter dial.

BTW, I just got a postcard from Hell - it shows a bunch of the little demons having fun ice-skating on the frozen lava pools....8^).

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), January 15, 2002.

Here's a question nobody's asked yet: What do you think the addition of electronic shutter control to the M6TTL will do to its already voracious appetite for those little batteries?

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), January 15, 2002.

How loud is the new shutter?

-- Frank Horn (owlhoot45@hotmail.com), January 16, 2002.

Shutter travel length has nothing to do with shutter speed; slit width determines the exposure time on the film. However, travel length is related to the time necessary to complete an exposure, as to avoid distortion taking pictures of horizontally moving subjects.

Sorry Alfie, she is a BITTER CROTCH!

-- Bitter Crotch (bitter crotch@arswhole.com), January 16, 2002.

"A line between 125/60 to indicate the two BATTERYLESS BACKUP SHUTTER SPEEDS. [emphasis added - more likely the ONE backup/sync speed of 1/100th - Andy]"

Since the TTL flash capabilities of the M6 TTL will probably be retained in the M7, it would be impossible to fire the flash without batteries, therefore there need be no link between the flash synch. speed and the back-up mechanical speed for batteryless operation. It has been "reported" on the LUG that the flash sych. speed of the M7 will still be 1/50 sec.

Incidentally, Olympus managed to achieve a top speed of 1/2000 sec. for the horizontally traveling cloth shutter in its latest OM models but the flash synch. remained at 1/60 sec.

-- Ray Moth (ray_moth@yahoo.com), January 16, 2002.

B.C.: actually shutter speeds are a function of slit width, as you say, AND curtain travel speed (1mm slit traveling at 10mm/sec = 10mm slit traveling at 100mm/sec = 1/10th sec. exposure.)

Sync speed depends in part of direction of travel - a vertical shutter only needs a 24mm 'slit', while a horizontal shutter needs a 36mm slit, for all of the film to be uncovered at one time. So traveling at 6000mm per second a vertical shutter will give a 1/250th sec. sync speed but a horizontal shutter's 36mm slit gives only a 1/166th sync speed (1/125 effectively).

Which still leaves the fact that nobody (I'm pretty sure) ever build a regular-production horizontal-travel shutter with speeds above 1/ 2000th, while vertical shutters now regularly hit 1/4000 even in entry- level cameras. Maybe it has something to do with shutter mass and travel speeds and braking distances and so on.

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), January 16, 2002.

Andy,

Exactly, at least how I see it. One would need multiple slits for higher speeds, faster overall curtain speed and/or lighter and stronger materials (Ti or silk, how about solidified spider silk).

I wouldn't get the M7 as reported. I want the camera to fail usable (no power) allowing the use of ALL shutter speeds.

I think the Nikon F2's shutter was purely mechanical. But somehaw I remember that the F2 has a 1/80 only fail mode, or were all speeds avaliable. Off topic, I know, but my F2 was stolen long ago, and trying to remember is bugging me, so I'm asking.

-- Chris Chen (chrischen@msn.com), January 16, 2002.

Chris: It was the F3 that had a 1/80 backup speed (fired from a separate lever on the front) to it's auto/electronic shutter. The F2 was all-mechanical and battrey-free - not even a meter unless you used the separate metering prisms.

Althoug oddly, the meter BATTERY went into the bottom of the camera, so even meterless bodies had a place for a battery - sounds sort of like the eyepiece blind in the R6.2 =8^o

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), January 16, 2002.

The F2 shutter is not powered by batteries. The F3 has the same titanium horizontal curtains, but is electronically timed and has AE. It has a mechanical backup speed of 1/80 triggered by a separate release, as the main release is electromagnetic. The FE and FE2 have electronically-timed vertical shutters with mechanical backup speeds as do the Leica R bodies except the R8. Having owned F3's and owning 2 R7's I can say that those backup speeds are next-to-useless in practice, except with flash. The FM3A is the first truely novel idea to come down the pike. What a pity it is that they stopped well short of a great camera overall: archaic, shock-sensitive meter needle movement instead of LCD/LED; no high-eyepoint or diopter adjustment in the finder, and no spotmeter. Leica doesn't have a monopoly on half-baked execution. As it has been described so far, I still plan on keeping my Hexar RF, hope perhaps to pick up a second one for a song as some people dump theirs for an M7.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), January 16, 2002.

You can't have everything. If you want AE there is a trade off - total battery dependancy, carry lots of spares.

If you want total (virtually) reliability buy a mechanical M2/3/4/6 as we have all been doing for years.

-- Giles Poilu (giles@monpoilu.icom43.net), January 16, 2002.

the nikon fm3a shows, that it is possible to have both

-- stefan randlkofer (geesbert@yahoo.com), January 16, 2002.

Huh? 1/1000th top speed? The M6 will probably go out of production, just to be reintroduced in 2005 by whoever owns the name 'Leica' then (Leica AG will have gone bancrupt in November 2002 due to the failure of the M7), with a few economised features that make it identical to the current Bessa-R. I'm with Jay on the waiting list for dumped Hexar RFs.

-- Oliver Schrinner (piraya@hispavista.com), January 16, 2002.

Darn it! I was hoping the M7 would ditch the TTL flash circuit and shave that 2mm off the case height. DX coding, what for? Longer shutter release throw, are you sure that isn't a shorter throw? Why would Leica make the excellent shutter release worse?!? On-off switch, yikes! Is this thing made by Minolta or Cosina? Has anyone opened the film back to see if the inards look like a CV Bessa-R or a Nikon FM-10? I'm starting to wonder what kind of an animal (or toy) we're looking at here.

-- Dan Brown (brpatent@swbell.net), January 16, 2002.

"..the nikon fm3a shows, that it is possible to have both.."

Yes, good point, but I don't think Leica will be doing the same with the M.

-- Giles Poilu (giles@monpoilu.icom43.net), January 16, 2002.

Very few small improvements. The on off switch is now vital since it has an electronically controlled shutter. I am not sure that this is worth it for timed speeds down to 4 secs. I would much rather have had a self timer. No big deal - not worth buying over the regular M6TTL is my thinking.

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), January 16, 2002.

More Rumors. The same guy that Andy quoted yesterday regarding the M7, has a new post today that may be of interest to some of you. He says the M6 classic will be re-issued, along side the M6 TTL and M7. LUG Thread

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), January 16, 2002.