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I'm baffled


Woody Campbell

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I walked around NW Connecticut on a very foggy day today with my M8 and two lenses: the lastest 21mm asp, and a 90mm "fat" Tele-Elmarit. The 21 mm is coded, the 90 isn't. Lens detection was on. I didn't bother to turn it off when I switched lenses, which I did a half dozen or so times.

 

Here's the baffling part: somehow the M8 figured out the tele-elmarit's focal length (90mm) and wrote it in the EXIF data. The first time I put this lens on the first five files show blank focal length but the sixth and subsequent files show 90 (there was a total time lapse of about a minute between the first shot and the first frame that identified the lens). The second time I put this lens on the correct data showed up after 7 exposures; the third time the first exposure had the correct data.

 

The M8 is not fixed and is running v1.09.

 

Is my camera psychic?

 

 

Could any of you with uncoded 90mm lenses see if you can replicate this?

 

Thanks.

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Carl, other way round, the camera reads the code and says, this is a normal Tri-Elmar, I need to look at the frame selection lever to figure it out.

 

Woody, are there screws on the bayonet ring of the 90mm lens where the sensor is located? These could trick the camera into thinking it's coded when it's not, but I do agree, it sounds weird.

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. . . Woody, are there screws on the bayonet ring of the 90mm lens where the sensor is located? These could trick the camera into thinking it's coded when it's not, but I do agree, it sounds weird.

 

The fat tele-elmarit does have a screw in the coding area. I sent the lens to Germany as part of a group to have them coded and CLAd. Leica said that they dodn't code this 90mm lens, but they did a beautiful job on the CLA - the lens came back in like-new condition.

 

I assume that the camera reads the frame line selector, but the question remains how, in this case, does it decide between 90 and 28?

 

The "freak accident" theory doesn't explain Ron's CV 50.

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I'm baffled too. If the 90s had just a single black patch in their code, I could imaging a screw confusing the sensor, but they do not. I don't think the camera looks at the frame selection lever at all if it can't see a real code. Woody, is the lens mount completely clean over the sensor?

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I'm baffled too. If the 90s had just a single black patch in their code, I could imaging a screw confusing the sensor, but they do not. I don't think the camera looks at the frame selection lever at all if it can't see a real code. Woody, is the lens mount completely clean over the sensor?

 

Here's a picture of the lens flange of the 90mm fat t-e, with a coded 35mm lux for comparison (I've oriented the lens lock notches in the same direction, roughly 5:00). The black bar points to the screw on the 90mm. If 000001 were the code for a 90 mm then this could be the answer, but I don't think that this is the case.

 

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The arcane little marketplace represented here cries out for a professional solution.

 

Whatever the legalities and/or need to pay Leica royalties for each lens coded might be, will someone please offer a professional service to 6-bit code Leica, Zeiss, CV and Canon lenses?

 

I have one Leica lens in Leica's service department right now for coding with four more Leica lenses and four additional non-Leica lenses in need of same. I don't fancy having to swith on and off a certain menu item each tims I swap lenses on my M8.

 

Using a Sharpie pen to mark a piece of tape on the back of each lens mount is NOT a solution!

 

-g

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I've been able to replicate this sporadically with 90mm, and not at all with my other non-coded lenses: a 21mm super-angulon (M-mount version) and a 135mm tele-elmar.

 

BTW the 90mm fat tele-elmarit is suprisingly good on the M8. The following image reflects minor cropping and perspective correction in PS. It's followed by a 100% crop. It's slightly softer than the latest generation of glass, but it has a "photographic" look.

 

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