My Leica M7 died on me

...and it taught me a lesson about buying film cameras, which I'm sharing with you

Yesterday I was shooting in my neighborhood when my camera just stopped. No shutter, no light meter, nothing in the viewfinder. My Leica M7, gone dark, out of nowhere.

First thought: dead battery. I use this camera a lot, so it happens. Luckily the M7 has two mechanical shutter speeds, 1/60 and 1/125, that fire even with no power at all. I was already using an external light meter (something I recommend to everyone, honestly), so I just locked the speed at 1/125, opened up to f/16 with ISO 400, and kept shooting.

Got home, swapped both batteries. Same thing. Dead.

People warned me about this. When I bought the M7, more than one person said something like: “you’re buying a thirty year old camera full of electronics, and if that breaks, you’re in trouble”. I ignored them and bought it anyway.

Now I’m paying for it. Probably a flat cable, or some fucking connector inside gave up. Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you’re getting into film photography and picking your first camera, think twice before choosing anything with an electronic shutter. A Hasselblad 500 series has no light meter and no electronics at all, the shutter lives in the lens, not the body. That means more lenses exist than bodies (manufacturers make several lenses per camera), so if a shutter dies, you swap the lens and keep shooting while the broken one gets repaired.

My new rule now is: anything with electronics inside, once it’s past thirty years old, is a risk. My Leica MP has no such problem. MP stands for “mechanical perfection”, and it earns the name, I pulled the batteries out and it still fires at every speed, meter or no meter. Some people bullshit around buying the Leica thas has no light meter, that’s bullshit, because you can buy an MP and take the batteries off…

There’s another upside to fully mechanical cameras: mechanical parts can be reproduced. 3D printing has made it possible for repair communities to remake old parts that manufacturers stopped making years ago, a door latch here, a shutter release button there... Electronics don’t work that way. Once a chip or a flex cable is gone, it’s gone, and if they’re old, you’re pretty much under the bus.

My M7 is at DAG Camera repair now. Probably $500, probably two weeks without it. And honestly, this is exactly why I think the Leica M6 beats the M7 in 2026, at least for anyone buying a first rangefinder. The M6 has no electronic shutter, so there’s nothing in there to die on you mid-roll.

Film is already an expensive hobby, and it keeps getting more expensive. So if you’re shopping for a first camera, my advice is simple: skip anything with an electronic shutter, even if it was made recently. My M7 was manufactured decades ago and it still caught me off guard.

I’m seriously thinking about selling the M7 once it’s back and picking up an M3 or an M4-P instead. But my MP is a battle horse, and it’s not going anywhere.