M6 Rewind Space

Last weekend I had the unfortunate experience of dropping my camera

bag due to a scuffle with a drunk. I started looking over my camera

(M6 TTL) in detail when I got home and everything seems to be ok but

I happened to notice the distance between the bottom of the rewind

crank and the top housing. For some reason it seems like a larger

gap than remember. The actual measurement is .060 (1.5mm), and may

have been this way from the day I bought it, but then again? So I

was wondering if this distance sounds about right. The camera was

inside a padded Domke bag and was dropped from roughly hip-height.

Look about right, you could try screwing it on, lift handle, loosen posidrive screw found there a turn or two and simply 'rewind' holdiing the slotted head on the top still with a screwdriver. You could unscrew it a bit first just to check it turns. I did post some pics of the M6 rewind parts recently, check my postings.

Thanks, will do.

Nothing happened to the camera, sp. If the fall had been a couple of hundred feet... then there would be a reason for a certain concern about the RF, but falling off that height, and inside a padded bag... Don't worry, nothing happened.

 

As for the distance between the little piece and the body, it's probably fine. In fact, that particular gap is the only quibble I have about the way a Leica looks.

 

So, sp, relax, breath with ease. Your camera is perfectly fine.

 

BTW, I dropped one of mine. It fell from my knees and my concern was the floor (it's wood). However, since it landed on a rug it was OK.

 

And the camera? Fine, thanks!

 

PS. If it makes you feel better, when my Nikon F80 was brand new, I took it to New Orleans, where I noticed a small hole on the flash hotshoe. I was sweating, cursing myself for not having handled it well, thinking I had just wrecked it... Until I came back home and realized that the little hole was meant for the insertion of the flashlight safety pin.

"a padded Domke bag"

 

I stopped using Domke bags after turning quickly and smacking it into a brick wall, not even that hard, and denting the filter rim on a lens. IMO if you can feel the equipment from the outside of the bag there isn't enough padding to protect from more than a scrape, not any kind of real impact. That said if your M6 had taken a hit on the rewind I would have a hard time figuring out how it would end up pulled away from the body, rather than bent.

This happened to me with an M6 a few years ago. The rewind crank ended up jammed against the body and wouldn't turn. This was in the middle of an assignment. The farmer I was photographing gave me a screwdriver and said "bend it back". I did. It worked. One of the nice things about a metal camera is that parts can be bent back into position if they are damaged cosmetically. The M6 is very vulnerable to this sort of damage due to the location of the rewind crank and the fact it protrudes from the side of the top plate; I would recommend always putting them in the bag with the rewind crank uppermost.

Ben,

The Domke bag I have is the F2 (at least I think it is) and it has the padded inserts in it as well as the padded bottom panel. So far it has been pretty good at keeping everything in one piece, including the unexpected drop. Thanks again for the reassurance, the camera seems fine so I guess I just never noticed the gap before.

 

-sp<div></div>