The plastic cover on my early M-6 is slick, and has a slightly oily tacticle sensation, although it is actually dry. I've just been told that current M-6 has reverted to the traditional old Vulcanite which gave such excellent grip. Any truth to this?

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), November 21, 2000

Answers

Not to the best of my knowlege. I handled a current M6TTL on the weekend and it had the same old covering. Sure you're not confusing this with the black paint versions that are floating around (Millenium, LHSA)?

-- Paul Chefurka (chefurka@home.com), November 21, 2000.

The covering on the new TTL seems to be of a mildly different (smaller) pattern and has a slightly different feel, at least on my 1995 M6 compared to the new M6 TTL I recently purchased. Your description of the earlier M6 covering is pretty good. The M6 TTL covering seems slightly drier and a little bit harder. I don't know whether it is vulcanite though because looking at photos of older M2'S etc. they seem different again. I doubt whether the new cameras are vulcanite covered; it wouldn't seem like a sensible economic decision for Leica to make. But you never know. There could of course be variations in the different batches of the covering that Leica buys.

-- terry ashton (mahv@xtra.co.nz), November 21, 2000.

No. Even the new, old Leica O has a "durable artificial leatherette".

Cheers,

-- John Collier (jbcollier@home.com), November 22, 2000.

Well, I guess that's that. Too bad, it's use instead of slick leather was one of Oskar Barnak's best ideas (IMHO).

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), November 22, 2000.