The original Leicaflex and Leicaflex SL's are probably the most "over built" SLR's ever done! The finder of the 'flex and SL still ranks among the brightest SLR finders made. A couple of the old Leica technicians at Wetzlar once told me that the best built of them all was the Leicaflex SL. All shafts and drives were oversized and made to last. I have seen SL's that has had 1-1.5 million frames though them (used for copy work and film use was documented) and though you could feel some "slop" in the advance they worked perfectly. I have a couple of them, an old Leicaflex with the "pie" shaped counter and a Leicaflex SL Mot in black paint. Both are still being used, mainly for the 100 APO-macro and the 180 APO-Telyt. The black one occasionally misses closing down the aperture on the 100 Macro, but not often enough to warrant a service. I also have a Leicaflex, 2nd version, with the round film counter dial. This one shows the problem with the older Flexes. The curtain is torn and the amount of labor required to replace the curtain is far more than the camera is worth. You have to dis-assemble the whole camera (anywher from 4-7 hours of labor) to get to it. It does make a great paper weight though as it is heavy enough to flatten even the most prolific pile of government documents!
What goes on these cameras are usually the meters, but there is areason for hand held meters anyway.
The SL2 is probably the best "user" of them as the meter circuit was improved. If you get one that is in good shape - it will most likely outlive you (even if you are young). The SL2 Mot and the SL Mot had Leica losing money on each of them. The figure that I heard is that they cost almost 1000 mark more to build than they sold for (no wonder they only made about 2000 of them in total).
I once had a SL2 Mot that had a misaligned motor. You would load up with film, turn on the motor and go through the film. When you opened the camera it had cheerfully torn all the sprocket holes and you had a narrow strip with images, two really narrow strips with filmtype and numbers on it and 100's of small filmchips all over!
Leica made the ultimate exercise tool in 35mm too. The Tandem mount SL2 Mot. Two bodies on a bracket with an interval coupling between them. HUGE and heavy. Mainly used by sports photographers and for aerial shooting. I always felt that it wasen't the athletes that deserved praise - it was the guy with the Tandem SL kit!. Shooting aerials through the open cockpit door of a helicopter, you used one safety belt for the camera kit and one for you!
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Bests to Everybody,
Tom Abrahamsson of RapidWinder.com
Flickr: Photos from T&T and Mr B
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