I want to know if the frequent use of motor drive on Leica M body put excessive "stress" on the transport mechanism ? Any technical considerations are welcome....Jean-Pierre Auger, Montréal, Canada.

-- Jean-Pierre Auger (paphoto@videotron.ca), April 04, 2002

Answers

What Sherry said about using any motor on an M4-2: DON'T!

She's a bit one sided toward the fact that the M4-2 is terrible. Given that, she said the camera would work, but not as well as if it had been treated better. I'm assuming she's talking about the clutch, the shutter speeds and winding, etc.

-- Charles (cbarcellona@telocity.com), April 04, 2002.

AFAIK any of the M's that were made or modified to take motors will not suffer any increased wear as a result of using the motor. You can almost wind-on as fast manually, they're not 8fps motors like on some top-end SLRs. OTOH for some people having a motor induces them to burn more film than manual winding, so in that sense you might see more wear on an M which has been motor-driven...more mileage, so-to- speak, not more stress.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), April 04, 2002.

As Charles has said the M4-2 should not be used with a motor. The M4-2 winder/motor coupling wears and then the gears skip a tooth or two. This causes the winder/motor to jam and, if you continue, it will damage the flash sync mechanism. After that, if you still keep using a winder/motor, it will damage the shutter.

OUCH!

The winder/motor mechanism was redesigned in the M4-P to solve this problem. The newer mechanism can be put in a M4-2.

-- John Collier (jbcollier@shaw.ca), April 05, 2002.