LHSA M6TTL: It Takes a Lickin' and Keeps on Clickin'
After blowing out the exposure on a few faces while unsuccessfully using fill flash with my Titanium M6 during a trip to Amsterdam in 2003, I decided to take advantage of what Verena Frey and Hildegaard Frisch taught me about the M6TTL’s flash metering at Leica Akademie Solms’ last English-language session in 1998, which featured the then-new M6TTL. Better late than never.
Bill Price, who owned the now-closed Bob Davis Camera in La Jolla, convinced me to buy a new M7 instead of a used M6TTL. When his store held a Leica day event ten days later, I bought a new M7. Thanks to Southern California Leica reps Mary Jo and Eberhard Kuehne, my new M7 had the brighter MP finder, which Leica had just added to the M7. My new M7 and the SF-20 flash survived a bicycle accident just a few days later caused by a cell phone jabbertalky who ran a stop sign while talking on a cell phone.
Fast forward six years to Paris. The batteries ran out, and as I forgot to bring the empty film can containing extra batteries, only 1/60 and 1/125 of a second were available – not very useful when shooting Tri-X on a bright day. After walking back to the hotel and replacing the batteries, I looked for used M6TTLs online while having a chocolat chaud and a croissant at Cafe St. Regis. Tamarkin Camera had a used LHSA Black Paint M6TTL, and I called Stan on Skype from the hotel later to see if he still had it. He did, and graciously agreed to hold the camera body until I got back from Paris.
The camera was in mint condition and so was its black paint finish. When Stan called to see how I liked the camera, I told him, “It’s a good thing I really do, because I scratched the paint with the strap hooks while putting on the strap!” And so I had the best of both worlds: a fullymanual M6TTL, and an M7 with a bright finder that’s perfect for film noir photography.
Fast forward again to Paris – four years this time. Walking back to the Hotel Abbatial St. Germain, my home away from home, the sidewalk on the Pont de l’Archeveche overflowed with tourists taking selfies, photographing Notre Dame,and more than a few people talking or texting as they walked. Although I walked along the edge of the sidewalk to stay out of their way, a jabberwalky still walked into me, knocking me off balance.
The next thing I remember, I was on my hands and knees in the street, and the M6TTL was lying on its top in the street with me. A couple of passers-by asked if I was all right, and I took stock of myself for a minute. Road rash graced my palms, knees, and the M6TTL’s top plate.
Bob’s Lucky LHSA M6TTL
Since I didn’t think anything was broken, I thanked the good Samaritans, then hobbled back to the hotel and checked the camera. Aside from the gouges to the shutter speed dial, rewind crank, and top plate, it was okay. No glass was broken, and my workhorse 35mm 1.4 ASPH lens focused smoothly. I called Global Rescue, which referred me to Hotel-Dieu de Paris, where a nurse examined me within five minutes of arriving, and a doctor saw me right after that.
Thanks to the jabberwalky, I got to visit Paris’ oldest hospital, which Saint Landry founded in 651 and which is less than a block from Notre Dame. After reading x-rays of my right knee and dressing my road rash, the doctor asked when I last had a tetanus shot. Since I couldn’t remember getting one since reporting for active duty as a Navy officer in 1989, they gave me a parting shot just to be safe. When I asked for the bill, the clerk said they’d mail it.
Several months later, the hospital sent me a bill for 135 What a pleasant surprise – far less than what it cost to eventually adjust the M6TTL and lens when thousands of miles in the gear compartment of my Jetta TDI took its toll on the lens flange a year later. And the look on my doctor’s face when I handed him the tetanus vaccination certificate in French was priceless.
Bob Soltys is a film photographer and letter revivalist. His dog Lucky’s book A Lucky Life (www.ALuckyLifeBook.com) includes a chapter about meeting Magnum photographer Dennis Stock on the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, as well as black and white photographs Bob took of Lucky with his M6TTL and M7.