[Julian Thompson]

OK - I have gone for it and done the adjustments myself and learned how the rangefinder is set up.

My camera is now 99% at all distances. I feel that I will be able to achieve 100% with a little more fiddling but in the mean time I understand it enough to post up what I have done. It is actually not difficult but does take some time to get right and to acquire a 'feel' for the magnitude of the changes needed. Carsten put me on the right road to this last night so thanks!

I will detail what I did : (I have also attached my sketch sheet that I have done to help me visualise the adjustments which I hope makes sense - they are my notes only.)

You will need a 2.5mm allen key and a small screwdriver which you should grind a very slight angle on so that as you fit the screwdriver into the head on the focus throw pivot (A) on the diagram it allows a nice flat drive.

A) is the focus throw adjustment. If you look at the pic you can see that the screw retains an eccentric cam. If you loosen the screw you can rotate the cam (as denoted by the pink and blue arrows) freely. As you do so, the length of the arm itself changes.

By moving the cam counter-clockwise (as in pink arrow) you INCREASE the total available focus throw.

By moving the cam clockwise (as in blue arrow) you DECREASE the total available focus throw.

B) is the infinity adjustment as we know.

If you rotate the 2.5mm hex key counter clockwise (as in green arrow) you move the point at which the rangefinder 'sees' infinity further away - and this 'references everything forward of that.

If you rotate the 2.5mm hex key clockwise (as in yellow arrow) you move the point at which the rangefinder 'sees' infinity closer to you - and this 'references everything forward of that.

Right - so they are the two adjustments you have available to you. From my playing about the best way to set it up is this.

1) Infinity is very important. Step 1 is to look at something with lots of contrast a long way off (a star does seem to work very well but today I've been using a clock tower in the far distance and that's fine too) and then adjust the roller (B) so that this perfectly coincides. Don't accept the nonesense I was spouting before about it not mattering. It really matters that you can 100% converge the object at infinity.

2) Now, take a photo at a big aperture of something close to you - like 0.8 meters or similar. I found text to be excellent. Note whether you now have front focus or back focus. If you have front focus (like I did - big time!) then your focus throw is too short; ie your arm is too long, so when the lens rotates you're not pushing the rangefinder enough. So you need to shorten the arm by loosening (A) and twisting the cam slightly anti-clockwise. (If you have backfocus then it's obviously the inverse and you need to go clockwise to lengthen the arm and reduce your focus throw).

3) Now, recheck infinity. As Jaap said, rightly, before, it will now be wrong, because you have now moved the arm and so the roller wheel has also moved. But this is not a problem - just recorrect infinity as in 1) above to compensate for the altered focus throw.

4) Repeat step 2. You will see that the focus point has altered. Whether it has moved too little or too much will calibrate your hand/eye as to how much you need to make the adjustments but in general I made positive, but not excessive tweaks each time.

5) When you are happy with the infinity and close settings you want to shoot some images off that are at various distances just to make sure that everything is right. On my setup which consists of all current model lenses (not sure if this is relevent) I did not have to compensate with any kind of compromise here. When my infinity setting is right and the focus throw is perfect the transgression from near to far is linear and my lenses are sharp right the way through the range. I suppose that if this were not the case or if your lenses varied then you'd need to get them recalibrated, or maybe accept a compromise and shoot accordingly. Don't know because it didn't happen to me but worth mentioning.

And that's it really. You don't need any special tools or rigs and it's not rocket science - but it does take several hours to get right and that's obviously why Leica NEED to have a special rig etc.. otherwise doing it the manual way each M9 would be even more expensive!

I'm very pleased I now have a focussing M9 to play with but more importantly I feel that I have a better understanding. Hope this is helpful to someone.

PS It will be interesting to lend my M9 to someone else to have a shoot with to see if I have 'built in' corrections automatically for my eyesight. My guess is that I will have done but I'll report on that later....