Members of the OCCS ready to picnic
Toronto. Heading to Ohio this month? Join the Ohio Camera Collectors Society on Sunday September 16th at their annual picnic.
Email them at occs@insight.rr.com for times and location and to RSVP. The invitation is shown here. Details of the OCCS are on this site.
A prewar black enamel Leica II camera and Elmar lens.
Toronto. Did you ever wonder why the original Leica I with a “hockey stick” infinity lock and a non-interchangeable 5cm lens (or any I or II for that matter) is so darn hard to find? The answer lies with the old Leitz factory. In 1930, when Leitz came out with interchangeable lenses, owners of the original Leica Is could return them to the factory and have the lens and lens-mount replaced.
In a similar fashion, Leitz would retrofit Leicas at the factory to add slows speeds and/or built-in rangefinders. Only a careful scrutiny of serial number tables can show if your III, or IIIa, or IIIc, or IIIf began life as a I or II model. All changes were factory made. Leitz sold versions designated as models I or II to allow people to buy less expensive models of the Leica. Accessories were sold to add slow speeds or a rangefinder ability if it was later deemed needed and a factory retrofit was not practical.
Similarly, while post war lenses were usually coated to improve contrast, prewar and war time lenses were often returned to the factory post war and coated. This made the contrast far better but made dating a lens difficult unless a serial number list was in hand (that too was an issue since some lenses were assembled post war from prewar parts).
ISOOZ screw-mount to M-mount lens adaptor
Toronto. When Leitz came out in 1954 with the wildly popular M3 camera, they took into account the money Leica fans had tied up in auxiliary lenses and accessories. While the M series camera bodies were thicker than the older screw-munt bodies, the actual film to lens mount distance was 1mm shorter and the diameter of the body opening for the lens slightly larger.
This meant a thin tube could be mounted by bayonet to the M3 and threaded on the inside to take a screw-mount lens! The tubes came in various styles and were cammed to automatically set the bight line viewfinder frame. Wrong adaptor? No problem! Just use the tiny lever on the camera front to change the bright line to match the lens. Even today (2018) an adaptor will allow older Leica lenses and accessories to fit a modern day camera with a Leica screw-mount style lens mount.
The various original 1mm lens adaptors are ridiculously expensive today!
RASAL multi lens sports finder c1935 in black enamel
Toronto. When Leitz marketed their famous little Leica in 1925, it had a squinty little 5cm viewfinder that remained unchanged for the life of the screw mount cameras. Worse, by 1930, Leitz had added lenses of other focal lengths and made the Leica interchangeable.
To compensate for this, the company offered a slew of better viewfinders which could be slipped into the accessory shoe. Most could be adjusted for vertical parallax correction. These gave the photographer a clearer view of his subjects and framed the captured area for lenses besides the traditional 5cm lenses (Elmar, Summar, Summicron, etc.).
The viewers came in sports frame versions like the RASAL example shown above. Many had means to adjust to various focal lengths like the VIDOM, VIOOH, or the Leitz NY IMFIN, usually known as an Imarect. Many viewers offered bright lines marking the boundary of the focal length while allowing the photographer to see subjects about to enter the field of view. Some where collapsible to make them more compact to carry. Continue reading
Left the FIKUS for Leica lenses from 35mm to 135mm; right FISON for the 5cm Elmar
Toronto. Stompin’ Tom wrote a song of the same name in 1986. (And, yes, I have the CD too.) Before the second world war, lenses were uncoated as optical coating was still to be invented. When Leitz made the Leica interchangeable in 1930, it offered a number of lenses. To help the contrast, sunlight had to come from behind the photographer. This was common advice to all amateur photographers.
Lens hoods or sun shades helped as long as the sun did not actually hit the film. Leitz marketed many different types of hoods over the years. Some came with the lens, like the hood for my Summicron, and some did not, creating a modest after market. Above I show the variable lens hood, the FIKUS and the fixed 5cm hood for the Elmar, the FISON. These examples are both post war but both hoods were offered from the 1930s. While mine are marked Leitz Germany, the original design was by Leitz NY!
Today, we never worry about such trivialities. Either the smartphone comes sans hood or the digital camera includes that seldom used accessory.
Leitz NOOKY-HESUM
c late 1930s
Toronto. When Oskar Barnack created the Leica he used lenses focussing from 1 metre to infinity. Many users wanted to use the tiny marvels closer than 1 metre. This was solved for copying by various devices and stands. To use the camera in hand, Barnack came up with a special extension tube which allowed focussing from 1 metre to about 16 inches using special devices to correct the rangefinder and the viewfinder as the lens was focussed to closer distances. USPTO number 2,041,633 was filed by Barnack on February 4th, 1935 and issued the following year on May 19, 1936.
Dr Alex Wright (The Collector’s Checklist of Leica Cameras) thought the design might have been the last creation by Oskar Barnack, since he died January 16, 1936, after filing the American patent but before it was issued. The devise was patented earlier in Germany.
Based on the marking and use of chrome, my NOOKY-HESUM shown above was likely made post war in the late 1930s. It is new in the original red cardboard box. Note. Paul Simon used the title line as part of his song Slip Slidin’ Away! which was a singles hit in 1977 and is included on his CD Negotiations and Love Songs 1971 – 1986 (which includes his hit Kodachrome)
A screw-mount Leica with a 9cm Thambar lens
Toronto. Dennis Waterman sang these words as part of the New Tricks theme song. They are very appropriate as a tag line for 35mm film. The late Jack Naylor noted in his brochure that many cameras before the Leica used 35mm film, but the 1925 marketing of the tiny Leica revolutionized photography. In fact, early Leica manuals emphasized that you could enlarge the tiny inch by inch and a half Leica negative to a decent 8×10 print or even larger.
My friend and editor of Photographic Canadiana, Bob Lansdale, emailed me the other day that the Leica M7 was discontinued in May of this year, leaving only the Leica MP and the Leica M-A as the remaining film versions of the famous marque.
The Leica film SLRs and lenses in that mount disappeared years ago, victims of cost and a lack of interest. Canon film cameras have also disappeared this year according to PetaPixel. Nikon makes a couple of film cameras at the moment too. But as the song says, we are “… getting to the end of the day“.
Post war FOKOS (1949-66) for non-rangefinder equipped cameras
Toronto. Did you know Leitz made telemeters, or rangefinders before making their famous Leicas? The Leitz telemeters had a 1 metre or half metre spacing and were used to measure distances. In the days of view cameras, rangefinders were unnecessary since the image projected by the lens on the ground glass could be used to focus the camera.
When non-ground glass cameras became common, they simply used a small aperture and “fixed focus” or you could simply estimate or measure the subject distance and adjust the camera distance setting. The first known coupled rangefinder on a camera was sold in 1916/7 by Kodak of all people.
In 1924, the year before Leitz came out with the Leica, they made a smaller rangefinder that could be attached to a camera using its accessory (flash) shoe. The rangefinder was slid into the shoe vertically and a dial was rotated to make the two images of the subject merge. The reading (in metres or feet) was transferred by hand to the camera or lens setting for distance. Continue reading
Leica II 1932 courtesy of Rama (France) Creative Commons Share (see Wikimedia Commons)
Toronto. Today we don’t even think about focussing. On our digital camera or phone we just move the little green or yellow outline to the desired spot to focus, set white balance, set ISO, etc.
The example below is from my Apple iPod Touch and uses a yellow outline (not yet focussed when I captured this screen shot for an email). And using any digital camera? Piece of cake these days.
Not nearly as easy some 88 years ago! You had to set the aperture based on the light, gauge the distance, and shoot – on B&W film. No colour yet for the minicams.
My WINTU in its original box
Toronto. A popular means of disguising a camera is to take a photo at right angles to your position. This was often done with still camera viewers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. One such right angle viewfinder was created in 1930 for the recently introduced (1925) Leica 35mm camera.
When a rangefinder was added in early 1932, a means was needed to allow both view finding at right angles and the use of the newly offered rangefinder. Enter the WINTU. This neat little Leitz gadget was sold from 1933 to about 1939, although some were apparently made through and after the war. The drop down prism allowed viewing of the rangefinder with a slight movement of the eye. The WINTU could also be attached to a special lens cap sold in the early-mid 1930s to aid in framing when using an enlarger-like column for copy work before Willard Morgan’s popular focoslide (focaslide) came to market.
The WINTU was sold in either black or chrome to match the Leicas of the day. In Europe the chrome WINTU was also code worded WINTUCHROM. See these books: Leica Accessory Guide (1984) by Hove Photo Books; The Collectors Checklist 4th edn (1980) by Dr Neil Wright and Colin Glanfield; and Leica – An Illustrated History – Volume III – Accessories (1998) by James L Lager.
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