Hi, Julian. I put about 30 or 40 rolls of 400-speed black and white film through a Konica IIIa this summer. The thing is *SILENT*, built like a tank, the life-size finder enables shooting with both eyes open, and the framelines that change size as well as position to compensate for parallax give very precise framing. Above all, I consider the IIIa's front-mounted advance lever a stroke of brilliance (heh, heh). As with a bottom winder, you needn't remove the camera from your eye while advancing frames, but as *opposed* to a bottom winder, the index finger of your left hand is left free to quickly operate the focusing tab if your subject moves. I understand that the reason no other camera ever adopted this gimmick is that it's supposed to be problematic, but frankly, it never gave me any problems (except for slightly wider spacing at the beginning of the roll, but then, most older cameras do that if they haven't gotten a CLA in a while).
Despite all this raving, I sold my IIIa to buy a Leica M3, and haven't regretted doing so. The reason was that my IIIa had very inconsistent shutter speeds, something a CLA could have certainly helped, but probably not eliminated altogether due to the plain fact that non-electronic leaf shutters never give you the precision of a focal plane shutter, even the 50-year-old one of the M3. Furthermore, a CLA in Vienna, where I live, would have cost me 400 Euros, which would have raised the cost of the camera to almost 800 Euros - which, frankly, is a ridiculous price for this sort of camera. To give you an idea of how bad it was, the 1/500 speed sounded something like 1/50, and the 1/250 sounded like half a second. A look at my horribly overexposed negatives gave proof to this suspicion.
This is not to say you won't enjoy your new Konica. CLAs in the US are relatively cheap, and it's quite likely that Mr. Weber, who has been warmly recommended to me, will make a diamond out of it. Had I been in the U.S. at the time, I would have definitely sent my IIIa to him, and might even be using it to this day.
Let us know all about it when it gets back! If your shooting style is anything like mine, it might easily become your main camera.
EDIT: You asked about the quality of photos. Unfortunately I cannot answer this question as all of my negatives are overexposed by at least 5 stops. However, they *are* tack sharp, for what it's worth. 🙂
