Leica IIIc with MIKAS and 1/3 tube on a microscope
Toronto. Like a few other camera factories, Leitz is known for its microscopes. For years the makers of microscopes also made camera like devices to mount on the microscope and record little parts highly magnified.
A few years after the Leica became a marketing success, Leitz made a micro ibso gadget that joined a Leica camera to a microscope while allowing the image to be accurately focussed via a small telescope device.
A leaf shutter in the micro ibso (just above the telescope) ensured there was no obvious shutter movement. Leica’s traditional focal plane shutter – like all such shutters – would cause an asymmetrical vibration and blur the highly magnified image.
Shown is a post war IIIc and a post war MIKAS micro ibso with a 1/3 magnification tube and lens mounted on a c1930 microscope. The focussing telescope is the larger post war version. I picked up my copy of the MIKAS and 1/3 tube in 1984. Various MIKAS devices attached to both screw-mount and bayonet-mount Leicas as well as movie cameras via a c-mount ring.
The 1/3 tube reduced the microscope image to 1/3 size allowing most of the image to be recorded. Traditionally a glass plate at least about 3x the size of a Leica negative was used.
