07/03/2024
Dropped this in for a tune up in a specialist shop in London today. This is my Grandfather’s 1954 Leica M3 Rangefinder. He bought it several years after he emigrated to the USA from the USSR, via post war Germany.
He used it for about twenty years, and starting around 1974 it’s been sitting in a relative’s cupboard for 50 years.
The camera specialists said not much needs to be done to bring it up to normal working order aside from standard clean, lubricating, tweaking and adjusting the fabric shutter curtain. Not bad for a 70 year old piece of kit. These things were built to last - in today’s money, these cost a fortune 70 years ago.
Incredibly, the people at this shop in London knew right away that this camera hasn’t been sitting around in Europe all this time by looking at the mould that built up in the lens. They said that the two spots of black mould in the lens is typical of what they’d expect to find in gear that was stored for a long time in North America.
That’s when I knew, that these folks seriously knew their stuff and I can trust them to restore this.
I’m very eager to buy a boatload of cheap monochrome film and learn how to use this to shoot on the streets of London, and set up my own little darkroom at home.
It will take a while (a year or two), but watch this space and my website for results.
