I went down to Palo Alto Saturday for the Leica day at Keeble and Shuchat on California Avenue, by far the biggest and best equipped camera store in the SF Bay area. I was pleasantly surprised because I brought 3 Leicas to have the Leica Tech look at and clean and check (M2, M3 that I have had for 30+ years & R4S). I was a little embarrassed to ask her to clean all 3 but she said no problem because I was the only one there at the time. She did a great job cleaning the two Ms and checking shutter speeds but what really got me was that she really went through the R4S including actually removing one of the old gaskets/bushings and replacing it. Final result the speeds and meter were working correctly and the M shutter speeds were fine. I had met the Leica Rep before at Adolph Gasser in San Francisco so he must be a regular on the west coast. He let me look at and try out some of his more exotic glass;noctilux, 75 summilux & tri-elmar on my M6 so Im anxious to see the slides I shot in the store. I got to play with the 80 summilux, new 50 summilux and 21-35 zoom on his R8. For the day all the Leica stuff was heavily discounted. I handled the M7 but didn't like the finder very much. Probably more my problem than the M7. Lot of other camera reps in the store including Canon, Nikon, Minolta. I ended up the morning across the street in the digital store where I decided the Canon digital cameras were a lot more for me than the Nikon which I didn't like the feel of. Cheers.

-- Gil Pruitt (wgpinc@yahoo.com), June 04, 2002

Answers

Just curious - will the Nikon reps check and adjust the meter on an old FE (for free) if I can find a Nikon Day? Does anyone know of an upcoming Nikon Day in Northern CA?

-- Sanford (sanford@usa.com), June 04, 2002.

I ended up the morning across the street in the digital store where I decided the Canon digital cameras were a lot more for me than the Nikon which I didn't like the feel of.

Interesting comment Gil. I found the same thing, which is why my Nikon gear is gone and has been replaced with Canon. At least now my lenses will work on the digital body I decide to buy...

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), June 04, 2002.

I actually quite like the Nikon digital SLR offerings. But they aren'tmaking a 8fps digital body like Canon is (and weren't making a digital body smaller then the f5, until the D100), so the nikon all got sold for Canon.

-- Josh Root (rootj@att.net), June 04, 2002.

But isn't it true that no digital camera is worth a damn until Leica finally decides to rebadge a decent one? Don't we all want a digital camera with the Leica name on it? Why would you use Canon or Nikon?

-- Keith Davis (leica4ever@yahoo.com), June 04, 2002.

Don't know about Nikon days, but I suspect you could find a Canon day at any good Saturday morning flea market...

-- Kevin Baker (kevin@thebakers.org), June 05, 2002.