I remember being toally in awe when I learned that the old Nikkormat EL would go past its 1/1000th stop speed when shot in auto. I had a customer who did this regularly, and showed me his tests, which proved it, and some sample shots, which looked good. The trick was to see which lens opening indicated 1/1000th, then to open up one or two stops more. The camera would indicate overexposure, but in fact, the shutter would work pretty well up to about 1/4000 or a little beyond.

I'm wondering if the M7 could be coaxed into the same behaviour?

The EL, and many other older cameras, just used an analog circuit to delay the 2nd curtain of the shutter. I'm wondering if the M7 is that simple or if it has a "brain" that does the timing, ie, not really stepless shutter speeds, but lots of very small steps, maybe 1/12 stop or so. I think if the latter was the case, beyond 1/1000 would be blocked.

Anyone know how it works on the M7?

-- Charles (cbarcellona@telocity.com), March 27, 2002

Answers

the m7 is "smarter" than my EL2. it has stepped speeds per eputs review/ad. and by the way, the ELs were very unpredictable when used in "overload mode" as you described. there was no reliable 1/4000th. and by the way, leica is making a big fuss about the m7's higher sync speed when the special module is used. ten years ago olympus got its cloth shuttered, FULLY mechanical om3 to sync at 1/2000 using an olymps dedicated flash. and why did leica spend so much money (again according to eputs) designing an electronically controlled horizontal travel cloth shutter when minolta had solved the problem handily in the CLE?? can't stuff be licensed (maybe nikon nikon will license the dual manual/electronic system of the fm3a so the m8 will have the full range of mechanical speeds when aliens come and eat all our batteries).

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), March 27, 2002.

Aliens eating the batteries... hmmm

Seriously, I never had an EL or EL2, but the one customer that used that technique a lot banked on it, and it was reliable for him. Actually, I think he had an EL-W, maybe he got one that just happened to work well with that sort of use.

-- Charles (cbarcellona@telocity.com), March 28, 2002.

charles -- i didn't mean to imply that you were wrong, merely that the speeds were not reliable above 1/1000th. you can get faster speeds though (but not with m7 apparently). and, yes, aliens love batteries!! do you really think the gov't banned mercury batteries because they were environmentally unsafe . . . puleeze, what isn't bad for the environment. the aliens were addicted, and some were getting qwite plump! :)

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), March 28, 2002.

I've read in several different sources that Leica has indeed experimented with 1/2000, but the effects of braking put undo stresses on the shutter curtain, that Leica thought would affect reliability. Perhaps Leica will eventually do what Pentax did with the LX and use titanium curtains instead of silk. The Pentax LX used a horizontal shutter curtain, not unlike the Leica M7, with a speed of 1/2000, The other interesting thing is the Pentax was unable to get flash sync above 1/75. This is why everyone else has gone to a vertical shutter, travel distance is virtually halved. But, for me, I consider a horizontal shutter de rigueur for the M RF, and will not compromise on this issue. I wish those of you that consider this such a big issue would go buy a Hexar, Contax, or Bessa, since that seems what you want to turn the wonderful M into.

-- Glenn Travis (leicaddict@hotmail.com), March 30, 2002.