I sent my M4-P to the local Leica service centre to have it fitted with a rubber-padded eyepiece today, and while waiting for the technician to show up, I looked around the showroom and, WOW, there were stacks of gorgeous Leica product brochures that you could take home for free!! Leica seems to have spare no expenses to design and print their product brochures. The one for the O-Series Camera is practically an instant collectors' item. Has it occurred to anyone that ten year from now these brochures would be prized collectibles??

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), May 22, 2001

Answers

Hoyin

Check out ebay and you will see that there is a good market in Leica brochures and has been for a long time. The "classic period" are the most collectible (1920-1970).

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), May 22, 2001.

Veering off topic a bit: how much did Leica charge you to install the rubber-padded eyepiece? I wear glasses sometimes and the M4-P's metal eyepiece is always scratching my glasses.

-- richard le (rvle@bellatlantic.net), May 22, 2001.

Richard, Schmidt Photo, Hong Kong's Leica agent, charged me HK$600 (equivalent to about US$77) to have the M6 rubber-padded eyepiece installed on my M4-P. It's expensive, I know, but I just can't stand the metal eyepiece scratching up my glasses any more! Stephen Gandy (of cameraquest.com fame) sells a Leica M Eyeglasses Protector on line for US$6, which I have considered but thought better of it because it simply isn't worth it after taking into account the added cost of shipping. I also tried cutting a doughnut piece from a soft transparent plastic pad (meant for padding the bottom of a chair leg--sold very cheaply at local home appliances shops) and glued it onto my M4-P's metal eyepiece. My home-brew eyeglasses protector kept falling off at first becasue the double- sided self-adhesive tape wasn't strong enough to hold it in place. However, it stayed on well with rubber shoe glue (the glue is removeable on metal surfaces), but it was damn ugly even though it did the job! Finally, I bit the bullet and forked out the money for a proper M6-type eyepiece.

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), May 23, 2001.

Thanks Robin! I'm going to start hoarding current Leica brochures-- they will add to my retirement assets! ;-)

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), May 23, 2001.

Leica indeed has nice brochures. I also got Leica annual report for a couple of years, since I owned some Leica-Camera AG stocks bought on the Frankfurt exchange (terrible investment )

The "Leica Photography" magazines are also very good ( Which seems replaced by "Leica World")

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), May 25, 2001.