Fast shutter speeds on Leica IIIa

[Nigel Craig]

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The (retired) repairer who is replacing the shutter curtains on my 1937 IIIa (at considerably lower cost than market rate) thinks that, although the camera is cosmetically nice, it has had quite hard use over it's life and as a result he can't enable the shutter to tension at 1/400th or 1/1000th.

Is this a common issue? I suspect it could be fixed with replacement parts and the very faint rangefinder re-silvered but at a cost out of proportion to it's value. I also have a 1949 IIIc which I'm far more likely to use so having the IIIa, which I might use very occasionally, working properly up to 1/200th is something I can live with.  

[jerzy]

problems with 1/1000 are not unusual with IIIa, less with  IIIc. Inproper repair in the past (overspanning the springs imstead of cleaning the shutter) might have damaged springs. To illustrate what I mean: left is overspanned and damaged spring, right is good working spring. Shutter and spring are from camera from 1930. 

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Spare parts are not available anymore, so he has to do the best with what he has. On the contrary, replacement for beam splitter (improving faint rangefinder) are available and at much lower costs then re-silvering old ones