WATE help

[danhefner]

I have a WATE. I bought it when I bought my M8 about a year ago, and I've used it only sporadically.

Now I have an M8.2. I tried mounting the WATE on the camera today, it so happened the lens was set for a long focus while I was trying to mount it, and I found it would not mount. Moving the focus ring to a shorter focus, it mounted. Once mounted, however, I could not get the lens to focus to infinity. I think that the brass extends too far back and pushes against something in the camera and prevents it from focussing to infinity.

I have noticed a slight detent at 0.7m, which is to be expected (as shorter focal lengths are grayed). However, while the lens has markings at shorter focal lengths, my lens won't focus through the entire range.




Any thoughts?

[Auni]

I have the Tri-Elmar as well and mine will not couple to the view finder at less then .7m either. If, you read the manual it will describe that the finder is only coupled to .7m. At that point you hit the indent and the focus becomes stiffer (normal). You can then turn the focus to .5m and no further.

I am not sure about your other concern. Could you provide some more information.

[marknorton]

The rangefinder only works down to 0.7m; below this, the cam on the lens disengages from the roller (by moving forwards) so that at close focus, the focus patch is no longer moving. It's bizarre they provided this close focus capability without any means of focussing it. OK, there's a distance scale but were do you measure, exactly?

As for mounting the lens, if you set the focus to 0.5m on the lens, then mount it, can you then focus to infinity? I remember there were problems when the WATE came out with the roller not being perfectly aligned with the brass cam and slipping to one side - look for paint wear on the outside of the brass focussing cam. Be careful not to force the focussing - the mechanical advantage is considerable and it could upset the focussing alignment.

All in all, for all its optical quality, the WATE is not the best thought out lens (filter arrangements, lack of focal length coupling) and I'm not alone in thinking they should have just done an f4 prime at, say, 16 or 18mm. Put the lens on a Panasonic G1 for a live view through the lens and it really underlines how puny the 1:1.31 zoom ratio is.

[robsteve]

As Mark noted above you probably have an alignment problem with the little focus follower arm (the arm with the roller) and the focus cam on the back of the lens. Your camera should probably be sent into Leica service to have this arm adjusted. Leica has a special tool and jig to bend this arm so that it is within specifications. Yours must be slightly off, since it works with your other lenses.

Robert