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M & Summilux 50 ASPH stress test


hoppyman

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I took a little tumble down a couple of stone stairs today while visiting Leica friends in Barcelona. That's what happens when you look for subjects to shoot more than where you put your feet :o

 

My M crashed hard onto the stone paving, crushing the hood on the Summilux 50 ASPH.

quite a memorable sound on impact :eek:

Vertical alignment is out on rangefinder but otherwise camera seems good. We will see what customer service finds inside. Only the hood appears damaged on the lens. Annoying though since I only just paid a LOT to have the focus adjusted. Let's see what CS finds with that one too.

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I took a little tumble down a couple of stone stairs today while visiting Leica friends in Barcelona. That's what happens when you look for subjects to shoot more than where you put your feet :o

 

My M crashed hard onto the stone paving, crushing the hood on the Summilux 50 ASPH.

quite a memorable sound on impact :eek:

Vertical alignment is out on rangefinder but otherwise camera seems good. We will see what customer service finds inside. Only the hood appears damaged on the lens. Annoying though since I only just paid a LOT to have the focus adjusted. Let's see what CS finds with that one too.

[ATTACH]399880[/ATTACH]

 

 

...stuff of dreams, eh? I still recall the sound of one of my MPs + 50/1.4A clanging down approximately 13 floors of concrete. Blasted camera still fired when I recovered the combo from terra firma (the lens was post-mortem). The good folk at MK were visibly excited when I took the items in - happy to report that the repaired camera and replaced lens are still in use to this day. They both function perfectly.

 

Hope you are in better shape than your equipment, Geoff. Keep us posted on developments.

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It actually shoots fine and there are two perfectly exposed (but out of focus) frames of the grey stone paving that were made on impact! The lens and rangefinder actually appear to focus correctly too, albeit with the second RF image vertically displaced.

It was on a wrist strap so I guess the preceding knee-elbow-hand impact meant it swung out from there as I assumed the horizontal! rather than falling a metre or so directly :eek:

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I took a little tumble down a couple of stone stairs today while visiting Leica friends in Barcelona. That's what happens when you look for subjects to shoot more than where you put your feet :o

 

My M crashed hard onto the stone paving, crushing the hood on the Summilux 50 ASPH.

quite a memorable sound on impact :eek:

Vertical alignment is out on rangefinder but otherwise camera seems good. We will see what customer service finds inside. Only the hood appears damaged on the lens. Annoying though since I only just paid a LOT to have the focus adjusted. Let's see what CS finds with that one too.

 

This looks exactly like my M9 when I dropped it last year. Not everybody gets the privilege to bend 4K lens parts with pliers - welcome to the club!

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Glad both you and the camera survived. I remember reading in a Leica magazine back in the 1960s about a skydiver who lost his M3 a few thousand feet up. He found it, cleaned the mud off the lens, and took a few shots. Of course it went in for service too: pressure plate was broken. Don't try that with a digital M!

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Looks like you are fine also - that service could have been more time consuming ;-)

Had a similar flight, different gear, but nice large Zeiss on, hood also absorbed it, but the bang did me make think I will have thousands of single pieces. Since this time I know what that can stand...

Good luck to get back your gear soon.

Cheers Axel

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Thanks everyone for your good thoughts. I had borrowed an M9 to shoot with for a couple of days but I took the M out again instead. Yesterday I walked about six hours, shooting with a friend here and we got some amazing light for the last couple of hours. I found that I can still use the RF but the vertical double image can be a little slowing. I remembered that I had the EVF and I learnt a lot about using that. It can be very very good for some shooting. Framing is perfect of course but I never expected it to be so easy to focus with as long as you have an extra second or so. The crushed hood just pulled off the lens and the lens remains perfectly calibrated. They build them tough!

One of the last shots of the evening with the 50 at f/2.

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You're right about the EVF having it's place.

 

I used the M with 1.0/50 Noctilux and EVF at a family get together last night. With a difficult-to-focus-at-the-best-of-times-because-of-wide-aperture-and-inherent-focus-shift lens the EVF was very helpful. I didn't miss focus even once :eek:.

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The 50lux had been my favourite because of its optic qualities. Now that I dropped it, I may add its building quality. Got it within 3 weeks back from Solms with just the hood replaced. Looks new, performs as it has always done: superb. Luckily, I didn't drop my M240.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hmm I may need to find a cheaper hobby...and get some anti-clumsy training.

After two weeks and a number of follow up calls by me, today the Australian repair agent reports that camera and lens definitely must go to Germany. I am told that they were unable to obtain permission to adjust the vertical RF here and that the lens "optics are out due to the severe impact". Sigh. In use with the EVF after the drop, I did not see any error or any other visible fault with the lens (apart from the crushed hood) however there is no doubt about the impact part!

 

Sadly I only just got that lens back earlier this year after finding that the focus was inexplicably newly out (no previous impacts whatsoever). $604 that last time.

It was previously adjusted for free in Solms 2009 around its second birthday..

 

This round I have had to pay already about $300 in freight/insurance and fees before both items actually leave Australia for Germany (and an estimated further 90 days turn around currently) The actual repair bill should be entertaining when I see it!

 

In Barcelona the total bill from the kind Pharmacist who cleaned and patched my knee and elbow and provided painkillers was 86 euro cents!

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