Adjusting the Leica
On Sunday I went out with Jackie to shoot a pre-wedding session with the soon-to-be bride and groom. I was tagging along as an assistant and to provide a second angle if needed.
When I got back home I noticed that a lot of my shots were out of focus.
Fuck.
And most of them were out of focus in exactly the same way. The actual focus point was behind what I was focusing on.
This isn't really a shocking thing for a rangefinder camera like a Leica, unfortunately. Since what you're using to focus isn't the same lens that is taking the picture you're relying on a series of mechanical linkages that are used to project the rangefinder image into the viewfinder.
No fear -- you can adjust yourself!
All you have to do is take off the Leica dot to get to the vertical adjustment (assuming that's off) and tweak it gently with a 2mm hex wrench. This gets the rangefinder image to precisely line up with the rest of the image
Then just take the same 2mm wrench to tweak the focusing cam to get the focus to line up right. To do this is an iterative exercise of taking a picture, looking at the results, tweaking, until you get the results you're looking for.
Ok, unless you're comfortable with this don't do it. But it's not a hard adjustment to make.