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I recently purchased a Classic Softrelease from Tom Abrahamsson at rapidwinder.com for my M3. As-is the shutter release is very smooth, and quite easy to release, but I wanted it to be even more effortless. Would be especially useful for when I’m shooting with gloves in the winter, or want to set off the shutter by just giving the camera an evil glare.

Browsing the various forums for user feedback on Tom’s release, the negative comment often came up that the release makes it really easy to take pictures when you don’t want to. For example, like when the camera is in a case. Many people just deal with it as a trade-off for , and others couldn’t stand it, and stopped using the release all together. I knew I wanted the large surface release, so I ordered mine to see if I was one of the people who could deal with it or not.

Shooting with the release was a dream. It gave my M3 exactly the feel I was looking for, but as time passed, I noticed I had to often cock the shutter before taking a shot. I processed the first roll that I shot with the Abrahamsson release and started counting. One, Two, Three . . . . Seven misfired frames on a roll of thirty-six! And possibly more that were taken uncapped with the camera in focus hanging around my shoulder that I can’t distinguish from my normal sloppy street photography.

19% wastage seemed a bit unruly, but I really like the feel, so I wasn’t going to give up on. The immediate options were to not cock the shutter after shooting each frame, or to remove the release for transportation. Neither solution was something I wanted to pursue.

So, sitting here late at night I found a small hair tie left by one of my female friends. I looked at it, then I looked at my M3. A light bulb flicked on, and I believe the problem has been solved.

With the hair tie wrapped under the release three-four times, I physically cannot apply enough pressure to the button to have it shoot a frame. Yet, it connected very loosely and can easily be removed in one second. I threaded it through the ring on my strap lug, and it will always right there, ready to prevent my camera from shooting when I don’t want it to.

I’ll try this for a few weeks and report back.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 3:10 am and is filed under Leica. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.