jandavid.me

September is a lean month. I only have one image to show for it. I did shoot an entire roll of Adox CHS 100 II, but very few frames turned out usable. Most of the negatives were completely clear. Who’s to blame? Leica, of all things.

I had bought my Leica M6 a few months earlier through the Leica Classic online shop. A 1991 model in excellent condition, freshly serviced by Leica themselves, with a two-year warranty. When I decided to get an M6, I deliberately chose Leica as the seller rather than some random dealer or an eBay listing. Buying a Leica is a significant investment as it is – I wanted to make sure I’d get the best possible product with the best possible service.

Ironically, after just a few weeks, the shutter release started acting up. A Leica M6, freshly serviced by Leica (!), with a mechanical issue. I was annoyed, sure. But this was exactly the scenario I had prepared for by buying a camera with warranty.

Since Wetzlar isn’t too far away, I spontaneously drove to Leica’s headquarters to have a technician take a look. It also made for a good excuse to visit the Leitz Park and the Ernst Leitz Museum on the campus.

They helped me fairly quickly. Someone at the service counter took the camera to the technicians and returned a few minutes later, problem solved. Apparently, during the last service, the shutter button hadn’t been seated correctly in the body. I was glad to have my camera back so soon. But back home, I discovered that bulb mode no longer worked. Pressing the shutter in bulb mode would make the curtain open and close almost instantly, instead of staying open as long as the button was held. Gritting my teeth, I planned another trip to Wetzlar for the following week.

Still wanting to keep up with my photo challenge and thinking nothing of it, I loaded a roll of Adox CHS 100 II and continued shooting as planned.

A week later, I was back at the Leitz Park. The weather was perfect, and I shot what were probably some lovely frames of the buildings on the campus. Same counter. Same employee. He recognized me immediately and couldn’t believe I was back. I explained the problem, which he could reproduce right away. He said a technician would need to look at it – about 45 minutes. My girlfriend had come along, so we passed the time at the café on site with our complimentary drink vouchers.

45 minutes later, the camera was handed back to me. Fixed – for real this time. They apologized for making me come back twice, then explained what had gone wrong. I don’t remember the exact details, and the explanation was a bit too technical for me to fully grasp. But in short: during the previous repair, a technician had accidentally knocked a part without noticing, which disabled bulb mode. They had now fixed it and also recalibrated all the shutter speeds to make sure everything was running correctly. That gave me pause for a moment – but I didn’t think much of it.

Then, some time later, when I finally developed the roll I had shot between the two repairs, it became painfully clear why they had recalibrated the speeds. It wasn’t just bulb mode that had been broken – all the shutter speeds had been thrown off as well. The entire roll was basically blank. Except for two or three frames, there was nothing. The image above is pure luck – shutter speed and aperture just happened to align.

It’s frustrating, and for a while I felt like I’d been had. You pay a lot of money for a premium product with warranty and good service, and you end up disappointed on every level. It could have been worse, though. What if I hadn’t noticed the bulb mode issue and taken the camera on vacation? On my last trip, I shot maybe five rolls with some really great images. They would all have been blank.

Looking back, I think I was just unlucky. The Leica staff seemed genuinely surprised by my case – this apparently doesn’t happen often. Given Leica’s reputation, I can’t imagine it does.

In the end, I got lucky. If I had bought the camera somewhere without proper service, I would have been stuck paying for expensive repairs at Leica or another workshop.

I’m over it now. I’m happy with my camera – it hasn’t given me any trouble since and works flawlessly. As you’ll see in the upcoming posts, I got some nice shots with it for the rest of the year.