By Ked · July 2026
July 2026
Every M body since the M3 fires its shutter on a spring, not a battery, and the M6 TTL is no different: a dead meter doesn't touch the shutter, the rangefinder, or the six-frameline viewfinder. What it does touch, and what almost nothing written about this camera mentions, is flash. On the M6 TTL, and only on the M6 TTL, flash triggering runs through the same electronics as the meter. Kill the meter board for good and the flash stops firing with it, through the hot shoe or the PC port, full stop. That single fact is worth more to a buyer than the usual "it's basically an M4 without a meter" line, because it isn't true, and because this site's actual job is telling you what that failure is worth on the used market. It's worth roughly $2,600 less than a working one.
Leica's own M6 TTL manual is explicit about this, and explicit in a way it isn't about anything else on the camera. From the power-supply section: the M6 TTL "requires two 1.5 volt silver oxide button cells or one 3 volt lithium cell for the exposure meter and to trigger connected flash units." From the flash section, in a boxed warning: "In order to trigger and control the flash units connected by means of the accessory shoe or the coaxial contact, the LEICA M6 TTL must be loaded with batteries and the exposure meter must be switched on." The TTL added a second photocell, dedicated to reading flash output through the lens, and Leitz routed basic flash triggering through that same circuit rather than keeping the separate mechanical contact every earlier M body used.
The base M6's manual has no equivalent warning. It describes flash as handled entirely by the attached flash unit or manual guide-number math, with no battery mentioned, consistent with the simple mechanical shutter-curtain contact the M3 through the M4-P all use. A dead battery on a base M6 does nothing to its flash. A dead meter board on an M6 TTL kills flash entirely.
Real failure is rarer than the parts situation suggests. Repair technician Don Goldberg reports that of 489 M6 TTL cameras he's serviced, only 2 needed a new main board, one from improper disassembly rather than organic failure, the other a factory defect Leica covered. Most of what looks like a dead meter is oxidized ISO-dial contacts in the film door, which peg the reading at nonsense values and clean off with a cloth. The real problem isn't the failure rate, it's what happens after: official replacement boards for the M6 TTL ran out years before the base M6's did, Leica no longer services the TTL meter circuit, and the surface-mount, epoxy-bonded board construction makes third-party repair difficult even where attempted.
This is where the site's own data matters more than repair-shop opinion. A working M6 TTL and a working base M6 Classic already price apart:
| Camera | Median (active listings) | Range | n |
|---|---|---|---|
| M6 TTL, working | $4,800 | $2,600–$15,000 | 117 |
| M6 Classic, working | $3,700 | $2,100–$14,000 | 212 |
| M4-P | $2,627 | $2,057–$7,000 | 43 |
| M4-2 | $2,629 | $1,097–$7,620 | 27 |
| M4 | $3,200 | $1,651–$8,000 | 104 |
Real dead-meter listings are rare enough to count on one hand across both models, so the numbers below are single data points, not a market rate, but they're the only real evidence available:
| Listing | Camera | Price | Disposition |
|---|---|---|---|
| "defective light meter... can no longer be repaired" (dealer) | M6 TTL | $2,623 | asking, withdrawn |
| "No Light Meter" | M6 Classic | $3,075 | sold |
| "meter appears faulty... one red arrow" + missing frame-selector lever | M6 Classic | $2,100 | asking |
The base M6 sale, $3,075 against a $3,700 median, is about 17% off, a normal discount for a camera that's lost its meter but nothing else. The M6 TTL asking price is the interesting one: $2,623 against a $4,800 median is a 45% cut, nearly twice as steep, and it lands almost exactly on the M4-P's $2,627 median, not below it.
That's the real comparison, not the M4. The M4-P is the actual functional match for a meter-dead M6 TTL: same six-frameline viewfinder (the M4-P introduced that 28/90, 35/135, 50/75 set in 1980; the four-frameline M4 never had 28mm coverage at all), same absence of a built-in meter. The M4-P also still has a working flash, since it never had TTL electronics to lose in the first place. A dead M6 TTL is a worse-equipped M4-P, same shutter and framelines, no meter on either, but no flash where the M4-P has one, and the market prices it at M4-P money anyway rather than below it. One asking price isn't proof of a settled rate, but it says the market isn't paying a premium for a camera that's quietly become something else.
A meter-dead M6 TTL is a $2,600-ish camera wearing a $4,800 badge: mechanically sound, correctly framed at every focal length the body was built for, and worth roughly what an M4-P costs, despite doing less than one. Flash is the actual dividing line, not exposure metering. If you don't shoot flash on this body, a dead meter costs you a light in the viewfinder and a chunk of resale value, nothing more. If you do, the M6 TTL is the one mechanical M where a dead board takes a real function with it, and no factory repair path exists to bring it back.
Browse current M6 TTL listings, M6 Classic listings, and M4-P listings at UsedCameraTracker.