I recently tried an M winder (I think for the M4 series) and every time I depressed the shutter release the winder a) made a loud knocking noise and b) bounced the release back up again in a way that would make it impossible to hold the camera steady for a series of shots. Is this normal, or was this a faulty unit?

-- Robert Appleby (laintal@tin.it), January 22, 2000

Answers

The winder M (as well as the winder M4-P and the winder M4-2 serial no. 10350 and up) fires at three frames per second with light pressure on the shutter release. The shutter release button cycles up and down as it working. As long as you do not have a choke hold on the camera it works just fine. The above mentioned winders use a motor that is "on" all the time and when the wind cycle is complete a shock absorber in the winder takes the load of the motor stopping off of the camera winding mechanism. This shock absorber in the winder includes some foam which, after repeatedly getting the stuffing knocked out of it, fails and allows body of the winder to be struck. Voila, a loud clank results. It can be repaired, I just had mine done a short while ago. The winder is never "whisper quiet" as Leica advertises (I must confess I have never heard any Germans whispering so I am not truly qualified to make the last statement) but compares favourably to a motorized N**** F3 or other such beast. The winder M4-2 serial no. 10349 and older is a completely different winder. There is no continuous feature and winder is not "on" all the time. The winder is switched "on" by a rod in the shutter release mechanism of the camera. This shutter release button - rod - winder system is quite often out of adjustment resulting in the winder being switched "on" if you slightly depress the shutter release button but decide not to fire the shutter. Some pretty amazing noises result scaring the life out of the unsuspecting photographer (and PopPhoto I might add). The only cameras these winders work on are the M4-2, M4-P and M6 series of cameras. The early winder only works on M4-2 and most M4-P cameras (those M4-Ps that do not have the shutter release rod can be modified) but I would avoid this winder for the aforementioned reasons

-- John Collier (jbcbicycle@home.com), January 28, 2000.

Here is a message on topic that I sent to the Leica-users: I just had an interesting conversation with Gerry Smith of Kindermann Canada regarding M winders. I was having problems with my camera underexposing part of the frame and also occasional horizontal "light streaks." As I was about to head off to Victoria, that bastion of all that is proper and Ted, I sent it off express for Gerry to look at. The camera checks out fine! Gerry told me that this is a common problem when the Ms are used with the winder, slower shutter speeds (1/60 and under) and the winder is used continuously (light pressure maintained on the release button). He does not recommend that the winder be used continuously at all, only as a single shot device. It is important to take your finger off the release button after each exposure or things go awry with the shutter mech. Every time I had a problem, it was with the winder hooked up and used continuously so it is hard to fault his diagnosis. This is a garbage sentence to make sure that all of the previous actuall

-- John Collier (jbcollier@home.com), March 09, 2000.

I found this website with an excellent description on how to adjust noisy M4-2, M4-P and M winders. The URL is: http://www2.bitstream.net/~campbell/ This is just a garbage sentence to ensue the previous actually gets in!

-- John Collier (jbcollier@home.com), April 10, 2000.