M7 -- plastic lamination on baseplate?

[markwilkins]

I just purchased an M7 body, and I'm curious -- there's a layer of what appears to be

plastic lamination on the baseplate. Is this intended to come off, like packing material, or

is it a permanent feature?

 

BTW, I just got my first roll back and I find that I have a much greater proportion of

keepers among my low-light people photos with this camera than with my AF and MF

Nikons. Much of this, I think, is the accuracy and ergonomic quality of the rangefinder

system plus the ease of handholding the camera acceptably at slow shutter speeds. The

lens is fantastic, as are the best Nikon lenses I have (in a comparable price range) but I

think it's the camera that makes the critical difference, at least in my photography.

 

-- Mark

[stephen_w.]

It's there to protect the base plat during manufacturing. Off course, you can take it off. Some like to keep it on as an atractive feature for resale.

[stephen_w.]

plate/of, where is the Al K. spellcheck?

[al_kaplan1]

Some people even attempt to keep from scratching the plastic! Others, like myself, are still shooting M bodies that are 30, 40, or more years old, complete with dings, dents, and the chrome worn through to brass along the edges and from strap wear on the ends. Enjoy your camera but USE it! I guess it makes sense to leave the plastic there until it falls apart or comes off on its own, since it's already there and doesn't add much weight...LOL

[wmwhee]

Mark,

For what it's worth, my experience in shooting handheld pictures of people in low-light conditions using a M7 camera and 35mm lens I purchased a couple of months ago is identical to yours: a significantly greater number of satisfactorily sharp images than I could make with my slr camera--an instance in which the camera equipment actually does makes a difference. Another unforeseen advantage of the rangefinder camera, on my part, is the ease of focusing wide-angle lenses. None of this, of course, would be news to those who use rangefinder cameras. It came as good news to me.

Bill

[markwilkins]

Thanks for the responses! I guess I asked my question about the plastic because I did pull

on it a little bit and it did NOT feel like it wanted to come off easily... almost like it was

glued on and not meant to be removed. I'll probably leave it there unless it starts to come

off on its own.

 

-- Mark

[joe_murphy1]

Mark, pull it off. Trust me, just pull it off. Does your DVD player have the plastic still on it? Leaving it on a user camera is silly.

 

Re: your second paragraph... Isn't that why you bought a Leica rangefinder?

 

That said, glad you like your new rig. Enjoy.

[markwilkins]

Thanks guys, but I think I'm leaving it on. First off, it really seems to not want to come off,

and second there's a hole precisely cut for the baseplate lock, which it seems to me would

probably not be there if it was intended to be removed.

 

If it does start to fall off, I'll re-evaluate. :)

 

-- Mark

[terry_rory]

Off, off, off, off.

 

Leave it on and you leave one foot (maybe just one toe), tentatively, in the collectors & 'fondlers' camp. Take it off and it signifies that you are commtitted to use your wonderful new camera as a tool.

 

When purchasing a new car do you leave the plastic covers on the leather upholstery?

[chris_markiewicz]

hello - i'm curious to know why you would get a higher percentage of low-light keepers with a rangefinder? i've read the basics of rangefinders but haven't tried one yet...

thanks.

chris

[Sanford]

Chris - the Leica M is made for low light photography. No mirror bounce means you can hand hold it at 1/15 of a second. Easy to focus a rangefinder in low light, and best of all, the lenses - my 50mm F2 Summicron is perfectly sharp at F2, no need to stop down to improve performance. I use it instead of faster film.<div></div>

[michael_kastner]

Well, I don't have a new car or leather upholstery either. But when I press my M6 TTL on my car (or anybody else's) as a support (because I don't always have my tripod with me), well, that plastic then takes care of the car's paint.

[__hank_boneroneo1]

<leave it there unless it starts to come off on its own. >

 

Enough fondling and that will likely happen.

[ben z]

My MP demo is the first Leica I've ever owned that had the plastic tape on the baseplate. I don't know what it's made of but it's not held on by static like what they use on PDA screens and it doesn't have conventional adhesive because it doesn't leave any residue and once you peel it you can't re-stick it very well. I started to pull the one off my MP and tried to re-stick the part I'd pulled free and it wouldn't. Just then I noticed a shutter fault and sent it back to Leica in NJ, when it came back a couple weeks later they'd put a brand new plastic strip on the baseplate. I'm just going to leave it there until I'm certain I'm not going to sell the camera. Once the uncovered edges start to brass I think the plastic would be a liability because it'll give the "farmer's tan" look once the plastic gets peeled off.

[wmwhee]

In thinking about trying to keep camera equipment in mint condition, I am reminded of the time I was getting out of the passenger side of my car in a gas station in Hays, Kansas a month or two after buying a new Nikon FM3a camera. Man, was I proud of that new camera! Anyhow, the strap of the soft camera case had wound around my right foot and when I threw my right leg out of the car, guess what happened? My camera cartwheeled across the lot. Needless to say, the camera--in less than perfect cosmetic condition now, but working perfectly--is mine forever. I "claimed" as mine forever a mint-condition Rollei 3.5F in much the same way, by dropping it in its case and denting the edge of the film door. Yikes! Ever optimistic I think to myself, I might as well keep these cameras now, without thought or worry about selling them in the future, use and enjoy them.

[david s]

OK so this is a little sad. My first serious camera was a Canon A1 (a superb camera with

fantastic 28mm lens). Almost as soon as i had bought the thing (I was only 17 at the time,

and had saved like mad for it) I got some sand paper and scratched all around the body

(especially the Canon name bit) so that people would think of me as an 'old pro'. Heaven

knows where I got this idea from, but then I was only (a very young) 17. Made the thing

totally unsellable when I bought an M4-P a few years later. Ha ha ha,

 

I still have the bit of plastic on one of my M6TTLs just because I can't be arsed scraping

the thing off. What I also have on both my cameras are the remains of little stickers that I

put on, with the current film - so that I don't lose track of what's loaded up and at what

speed. Looks atrocious, but who cares.

 

Then again, does make me look like an 'old pro', which I guess (30 years later) I am.

 

David

[markwilkins]

Just to be clear, I'm not super-fastidious with the camera. I just want to make perfectly

sure that I understand the purpose of that plastic strip before going to great lengths to

remove it.

 

At the moment, it's on there firmly enough that I'd have to scrape it off with a sharp

object, and if Leica is replacing them when they repair a camera that tells me it's probably

a functional part and not just a protective thing for shipping.

 

Trust me, wear on the camera baseplate is the last thing I'm worried about -- but if that's

intended to be a permanent part, I don't feel compelled to remove it.

 

This kind of reminds me of a story a friend of mine once told. He's now an editor at a car

magazine but when he was in high school he used to work at a garage that serviced

import cars, mostly Porsche and Jaguar.

 

He'd been doing some maintenance on a Jaguar that required disassembling a fair amount

of the engine and then he put it all back together. Usually he would not refer to the

service manual because he'd done enough work on cars that the functions of all the parts

were obvious to him, but this time, once he got the car back together, he had left over an

oddly-shaped metal part, about three inches across and half a mm thick, with a hole in it.

The car ran fine, but somehow this part had not seemed to be necessary and he couldn't

remember where it had come from.

 

He asked the garage owner what it was -- the garage owner looked at it and said, "oh, one

of these! Yeah, I never could figure them out either." He then opened a drawer and

tossed it in. My friend noticed that in the drawer there were a pile of those parts. The

owner pointed out that nobody had ever come back to complain.

 

-- Mark

[cameron_sawyer]

This is getting way off topic, but yeah, I know stories like that too, but which turned out differently. I was 13 years old, and my father and I bought a Triumph Spitfire with a blown engine, which I rebuilt. But after everything was back together there was left over a funny metal plate with two holes in it and asbestos on one said and no obvious function. The car ran, but as it warmed up started to backfire and run like crap. We tuned and tuned the S.U. carbs and nothing helped. Finally, a neighbor who understood these motors better than I explained that the leftover part was the carburetor heat shield -- the exhaust manifolds were radiating heat into the carburetor float bowls and boiling the fuel.

[markwilkins]

So what you're saying is... don't take off the plastic!! :D

 

-- Mark

[icuneko]

Exactly ... leave it on or the heat from the Leica glow will radiate in and boil the film!!!

[sprouty]

<I>hello - i'm curious to know why you would get a higher percentage of low-light keepers with a rangefinder?</I>

<P>

With a little research I'm sure you'll come across a bunch of reasons: no mirror slap which allows for longer hand-held exposure times, visible area around the framelines aiding in composing, No black-out during exposure, minimal shutter lag, quite operation, etc, etc.

<P>

And while I'm sure all of those may help some people improve their shooting skills, for me it was ease of focussing. The bright viwefinder (regardless of the speed of the lens) and split image really helped me. I'm sure there are AF cameras out there that will focus in the near darkness, but for manual operation it's quite amazing.

 

-sp

[wmwhee]

My used M7 had the plastic on the baseplate when I bought it a couple of months ago and I thought I'd just leave well-enough alone. I bet Leica would be amused--not surprised, perhaps--to read this thread concerning the protective film on the bottom of Leica cameras. Bill

[kent_tolley2]

I need to see pictures with and without the platic on the base plate.

[kent_tolley2]

I'll start. This was taken with an M7, the plastic on base plate removed.

[kent_tolley2]

ah...er <center><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/2986019-lg.jpg"></center>