Leica 50mm Cron part number

[ryan1938]

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I have an older 50mm summicron (rigid) with a serial number of 1623031. How do I figure the leica # of the lens in order to figure out the 6-bit code?

[lct]

Your lens seems to be a 11818 (SOSIC) Summicron from 1958.

It is not listed by Leica as a codable lens i'm afraid the only 50mm Summicrons listed as such being the 11817 (1969-79), 11819 (1979-94), 11825 (1992-94), 11816 (1994) and 11826 (1994).

I have no experience with this lens though so others LUF members will give you better news than mine hopefully.

[ryan1938]

Your lens seems to be a 11818 (SOSIC) Summicron from 1958.

It is not listed by Leica as a codable lens i'm afraid the only 50mm Summicrons listed as such being the 11817 (1969-79), 11819 (1979-94), 11825 (1992-94), 11816 (1994) and 11826 (1994).

I have no experience with this lens though so others LUF members will give you better news than mine hopefully.

 

Oh boy... what does it mean if it's unsupported? I shot with it on my m8 last night and it seems to have color issues on occasion. However, other shots were gorgeous.

[luigi bertolotti]

I have a Summicron of the same breed, just a little later (1.986.328 - 11118 from 1963) : the coding is surely a problem, but doesn't matter so much... as you surely know the correction at angles, required by the UVIR filter is almost negligible for 50mm and over. If the glass (AND the coating, which was someway delicate at that times) is in good conditions, there is no reason to have specific issues:

[doubice]

Ryan,

 

As mentioned above, coding of lenses above 50mm is not necessary. The only benefit will be the availability of EXIF information in the file. Check the following link, if you have not done so already:

 

Leica M Lens Codes

 

Two 50mm Summicrons are listed - try both codes and see what difference if any, will be in the results. The EXIF info will be the same for both codes of course.

 

As to the 'color issues' that you are mentioning - are you using a UV/IR cut off filter? What 'color issues' are there? The only ones I can think of is the usual inability to reproduce blacks as blacks when the UV/IR cut-off filter is not used.

 

Best,

 

Jan