What if.. Leica Changed the way....

Would a Leica M Handle faster for loading film with a hinged back ????
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No

Can you REALY load a Leica M "Faster" than a hinged back camera ??
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Yes

I honestly have not been able to, with 30 years of experience, master that loading a camera with a hinged back. Faster? No way, I fumble around so much trying to thread that spool, and then getting it fed on so it doesn't slip off. A nightmare for me, seriously.

I have never had a misload with my M6. Drop the film in, on quick check to make sure the sprocket teeth are aligned, close her up and away I go. Fast as can be.

The only loading systems that are better are the old school Canon QL of the 60s and 70s and the modern pull the leader to the orange mark. Other than that, those rear door cameras are faulted in my eyes.
 
Like Ralph: wrt loading, the M6 is the easiest non-motorized camera I know, and I've been around the block 😉

Roland.

PS: and thanks, Ralph, for keeping my GAS in check, too 🙂
 
Bottom line, what takes the picture, the photographer or the camera. Now I am no highly skilled artist, don't get me wrong, but I like my tool. You may like a different one, that is great. That doesn't make either of us right or wrong, it just makes us different.

Has Leica made changes? Well, very slowly, but yes, ala the M7. Would a faster shutter speed or flash sync be better, I guess so, but slower films work too, and who uses a flash? Different strokes for different folks.

What Leica needs most is a fully featured sub $1000 DSLR to use with kick a$$ lenses ala Canon, Nikon and Pentax to survive, not a change in their wonder niche masterpiece that is the M series.
 
Flyfisher Tom said:
I'm more interested in a working M9 at a $2500 price point.
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That just might be an interesting to many people.

Bob
 
All this pissing and moaning over the bottom loading of Leica is ridiculous! Yes, the Barnack cameras were tricky to do correctly, but the M series is a piece of cake to load, and anyone who thinks otherwise has just plainly never learned how to it properly. Even the old M3/2 loading is quite easy, and with the M4 on, it's just the easiest, fastest, most positive loading 35mm film camera made! How can people have a hard time with this? You just drop the film in, pull the leader out and into the rosette, and let the camera do the rest.

This point drives me nuts! Anyone who thinks loading a late model Leica M is difficult should spend 20 minutes with someone who knows how to do it properly. It takes about ten seconds to do! in that 20 minutes, you could watch it once or twice, try it for yourself several times, even shoot a roll of film, rewind, and try it again.

It's funny that Leica people positively worship the design and function of this camera, but so often don't learn to trust that design to load properly. The modern Leica rapid loading works, people! Try it- it's BLOODY EASY!
 
$30,000? That's evil-bay for you. It's promising to know that something besides a gold Leica that has never been contaminated with film can command such a price. Well, OK, it was a HYBRID Leica with input from Minolta. (That wasn't the first time - the Minolta XE-7 was supposed to have been the inspiration for some of the R Leicas.)

I have nothing against the idea of an M Leica with a hinged back. Certainly it would make life a little easier. But anyone who can juggle that many dollars should have no problem with the juggling to load their beast. The contemporary Contaxes had a totally removable back, which was fine as long as you took care not to drop the takeup spool in the process. Then there was the whole Kiev story, which brings up the matter of whether they can make good Contax copies after an evening visiting the vodka bottle.

Surely those guys in Wetzlar, Solm, or whatever city could modernize the M to accommodate modern tastes and practices. But apparently they figure there's no point in fixing something that isn't really broken.
 
Socke brings up the question of how many journalists switched to the new-fangled Nikon. Answer: most. And it was probably time. BUT:

Have you ever used a classic Exakta? Once you snapped the shutter, it went totally blind until you wound to the next frame. And there was no such thing as an automatic aperture - even though they finally did adopt "automatic" lenses that closed down when you pressed the (left-handed) shutter button. I happen to have three of the things, and only the VX1000 finally deigned to have an instant-return mirror. (They still remained a lefty's camera.)

My point is that Nikons had to wait until technology had caught up with necessity, and it was supposedly Pentax, not Nikon, that first came up with the above improvements. I well remember that by shortly into the 1960's everything you saw was done with a Nikon F. That was largely because it was the first "component" camera with so many possible attachments.

I also remember articles in Popular Photo debating the merits of "RF vs. SLR". There are unquestioned advantages to SLRs, the most salient of which is the versatility possible with lenses and closer focusing. No doubt about it, SLRs won the war. But that good old M (or IIIc) can still beat the socks off an SLR for slow hand-held shutter speeds. I've used my M4-2 down to 1/8 second hand-held and gotten decent slides. So there's still room for both types.
 
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Finally, there is such a thing as changing your mind. Ever hear of Zorki? Zorki is Russian for Leica. But since I can't read Cyrillic, I'll keep this in Roman type.

Zorki 1, 2, and 3 were bottom-loading. Zorki 4 had a removable back, a la Contax. Now you could put the film in by stringing it across. But by God, Zorki 5 went back to bottom-loading. Why? Up above I mentioned the bottle of vodka, but there must have been other reasons. Who knows? All I know is, I have examples of every Zorki from 1 to 6, except for a 2, which were only made for a short time and are scarce and more expensive.

So even in Russia there's debate on how to do it!!
 
For the Russians, improvements to a model often meant a feature was deleted, like slow speeds or engraving.
Sometimes for Germans too.
Like the meter being deleted in the m4-2, when the earlier CL and M5 both were metered.
Be careful what you wish for, ever load a CL? I can load an M2,3,4,5,6,7 twice before I can get the CL all situated just right.
 
I suspect there's very little reason for Leica to retain bottom loading other than tradition. Surely hinged backs have proven their worth, sturdiness, and reliability in rough conditions. Given that the M body ceded the issue at least to the point of the hinged flap, and that hasn't been a problem, making the hinged part large enough for full-width access surely wouldn't invite disaster. 🙂
 
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