Vandalising a Leica M4
A year and a half ago I got my hands on a Leica M4. This was my first foray into that world, the world of collectors, expensive lenses, mythical performance and all the other stuff that comes with it. Silly, I know. But in any case, I finally got one! It was a 1968 model (if the serial number calculations are correct), 10 whole years older than me! And it worked.
It did. It worked perfectly for approximately 3 frames. And then the rangefinder was out of alignment. Or maybe it was out when I bought it and didn’t notice. The good thing was that it did come with a warranty, as such I took it back to the shop and they sent it off to be repaired. 4 weeks later (things in the world of Leica take a long time) it came back. Perfectly aligned, yet only able to focus down to 1m (instead of the 0.7m it should). After a few words with the shop I decided to just take it as it was, after all my lens at the time (a Zeiss 50/1.5) could only focus to 1m and I did not want the “repairer” who fixed it like that to “fix” it again.
Out it went to another shop, promptly fixed but the bad news came: the 1/500 and 1/1000 speeds were a bit slow and the curtain travel iffy (giving me dark bands at high speeds). About 1 stop slow and even though they adjusted it and replaced a spring it was not guaranteed to remain good for long, the camera was well worn and the dark bands returned later in the year.
