Unnumbered Elmar 50 - Filed Marks on Front Rim

[mickjazz]

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I have an unnumbered 50mm Elmar with 3 filed marks on front rim. The lens is nickel, 7 o'clock with infinity stop. Very nice shape otherwise as is the 1935 black iii 149720. I don't know when the last blk iii was made.

 

I have seen marks on an Elmar 50 before on an auction lens. This lens has no "O" mark for a standard lens and the inner ring where a sn would be is thinner than normal. Unusual

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[willeica]

Generally, a 7 O Clock lens with no SN is an ' upgraded ' lens from an earlier 1 Model A. This camera does not look like an ' upgraded' item as it has a much later SN. Black and nickel models ceased around 1936 but some black models with chrome ' furniture' were produced for some years thereafter. As for the filings these may have been for a hood or filter of some kind. I believe that I have seen such filings before but I am away from my collection and books just now.

 

William

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[George Furst]

I was wondering if this may be an early non standard lens that was later upgraded to be standard by the factory. The early lens did not have an external serial number but often one is found engraved into the inner side of the barrel by hand. I have one that came on my Leica 1a camera of 1931 which has the number 78653 engraved by hand inside the barrel. This can only be found if you have the inner lens cleaned as I did, a $50 job here in Korea. I also note that the focus cam is very thin on this lens, the same as you mention above.

 

As for the flat ground on the lens, that could have been done to ensure that the screw for tightening the filter or hood to the lens would not slip off as they were prone to do. I have never seen this flat but often wished my screw mount lens had one!

[willeica]

I was wondering if this may be an early non standard lens that was later upgraded to be standard by the factory. The early lens did not have an external serial number but often one is found engraved into the inner side of the barrel by hand. I have one that came on my Leica 1a camera of 1931 which has the number 78653 engraved by hand inside the barrel. This can only be found if you have the inner lens cleaned as I did, a $50 job here in Korea. I also note that the focus cam is very thin on this lens, the same as you mention above.

 

As for the flat ground on the lens, that could have been done to ensure that the screw for tightening the filter or hood to the lens would not slip off as they were prone to do. I have never seen this flat but often wished my screw mount lens had one!

 

I have a 1 Model A SN 23862 from 1930 that has been converted to a Standard. It has an Elmar with no SN and a 7 O'Clock infinity stop. I have not taken it apart to see if the barrel has the SN etched inside.

 

The earliest Leitz filters for the Elmar screwed into the centre and did not use the outer ring. There is an early square filter from Verax which fits on via an elliptical metal piece that goes into a round shape when squeezed and which then fits over the outer ring. The earliest FISON hoods for the Elmar had round endings to fit on the lens. The very earliest ones had a square front which needed to be adjusted after the lens had been focussed. I can show examples of any of these items if anyone is interested. 

 

What I was remembering in my post above was a slot in the screw-in thread on the lens for the camera mount. An example is this one from the lens for 1 Model A SN 16825. I have reason to believe that this was a replacement lens as it has a aperture indications on the collar which did not appear until much later. Any thoughts about the reason for this slot would be appreciated. Picture below.

 

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William

[George Furst]

This slot had an elliptical shaped bent spring in it. This spring with a raised center that pushed against the outer threads and added resistance. The reason for the slot and spring is the early lens had a slightly smaller diameter of the inner threaded portion, the lens part that contains the lens. Therefor without the slot and spring it would turn too easily. All my very early lens have this slot and the spring. If you do not have the spring, the lens will turn too easily. I believe that it is a sign of an early lens as my later lens do not have this feature. I do not know when they stopped using the slot and spring, but I am sure it was in the early 30s.

[George Furst]

Please note also that the part of the lens that would later connect to the focusing cam is very thin. It was such because the lens was not designed to be used on a camera with a focus cam. This was before this feature was incorporated into the Leica II "automatic focusing" camera. That is why in the earlier part of this thread I thought that his lens was an early one later modified for cam focusing but still had the rather thin contact area with the cam.

[jc_braconi]

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Mike I do not know where you store your camera but for sure she needs a big cleaning ...

[chris_livsey]

Mike I do not know where you store your camera but for sure she needs a big cleaning ...

 

I think that would easily qualify as "near mint" on a certain auction site.

[willeica]

I think that would easily qualify as "near mint" on a certain auction site.

 

Cleaned up it could make a B or a B+. 

 

William

[mickjazz]

So true re cleaning. In actuality the images were slightly overly revealing. i have only had the camera for a few weeks and have been occupied with the some well engineering projects.  I have am a contract engineer and the leicas - all of them - sort of wait.  I have probably 20 or 30 black leica screw mounts, some perfect some not but still close to my heart sometimes because they have the former owner's name delicately engraved on them.  Best M

[pebbles]

That Elmar does have a number - it appears to start 33... but the picture is not clear enough.

[luigi bertolotti]

That Elmar does have a number - it appears to start 33... but the picture is not clear enough.

Hmmm... if you refer to these vague signs in this area on the front rim... I think they aren' numbers but "random noise"...

 

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(I have just bought a "5 digits" Elmar and scrutinized lot of front rims right in these days... )

Edited July 20, 2017 by luigi bertolotti

[wlaidlaw]

In case some folks are saying where would the "O" be to show my lens is standard, it is just under the focus tab. This is an unnumbered 5cm Elmar off my 1931 1C Standard. The "O" on the body is at 12 o'clock on the mount. It has always surprised me that it took Leica 6 years to get round to the idea of a standard flange focal distance for LTM. It now seems such an obvious idea. I would assume that the Standard concept did wonders for Leica sales, not just of bodies but lenses other than 5cm as well. 

 

Wilson

 

 

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[willeica]

In case some folks are saying where would the "O" be to show my lens is standard, it is just under the focus tab. This is an unnumbered 5cm Elmar off my 1931 1C Standard. The "O" on the body is at 12 o'clock on the mount. It has always surprised me that it took Leica 6 years to get round to the idea of a standard flange focal distance for LTM. It now seems such an obvious idea. I would assume that the Standard concept did wonders for Leica sales, not just of bodies but lenses other than 5cm as well. 

 

Wilson

 

The Leica was originally designed to be a high quality compact camera with a collapsible lens which fitted in your pocket. Each lens had to be adjusted to the focal plane of the camera to which it had been fitted. The concept of interchangeable lenses had been around since the 19th century but only in respect of large field type cameras using various plate sizes and with what was effectively TTL focussing on a ground glass screen. In the 1920s most miniature cameras were of the fixed single lens type. In the late 1920s Leica came up with the then radical notion of having interchangeable lens of various focal lengths on a small 35mm camera. The first attempt at this was the I Model C non-standardised version which lasted only for a year or so with only 2995 being made in 1930 and 1931. The lenses had to be individually matched with various numbering systems being employed to indicate matching. The rarity of such models means that they fetch a high premium today.

 

In 1931 Leica came up with the even more radical concept (which we accept as being the norm today) of having a standardised lens mount with standardised lenses both marked with a '0' to indicate standardisation. This was a remarkable achievement for its time and was the beginning of the system camera which we regard as normal today. From the day the I Model A hit the stores, Leica had started to improve it and it underwent at least 10 variations (see von Einem) before the I Model C arrived. I would not wonder about how long Leica took to reach the milestone of standardised interchangeable lenses. I would take the the opposite view that they achieved a huge amount in a very short period to give us the type of camera systems which we have today from all manufacturers. History can always look different with the benefit of hindsight, but it is best analysed from the perspective of its own time.

 

William

 

PS your lens is a very nice 'bell push' type

[wlaidlaw]

William, 

 

Many thanks for your as ever, very informative post.

 

The concept of standardisation had been around long before cameras were invented. The concept was probably originated in a semi-effective form by Honoré Leblanc for French Naval guns in the early 1770's, but the steeped-in-tradition French Admirals did not take to the concept. However others who had visited his workshop, such as Thomas Jefferson and Brigadier General Samuel Bentham saw the possibilities and developed the idea further: Jefferson somewhat unsuccessfully for small arms but Bentham more successfully in the British Navy for pulley blocks. The end result of his labours as Inspector General of Naval Works can be seen in the steam powered Portsmouth Block Mills, sadly with a lot of machinery missing the last time I was there about 10 years ago. The idea really came to fruition with Eli Whitney's muskets from 1798 onwards. His required tolerances were really quite small, just 2 or 3 thousandths of an inch. By the time Leica was developing their model 1 camera, machine tools were capable of tolerances of less than 5/10000th of an inch or 12.5 microns. This is easily good enough for lens register for film. That is why I was surprised that the concept of non-standardised interchangeable lenses was ever considered. 

 

Wilson

[jc_braconi]

Wilson,

it is difficult to speak about  microns in tolerance work when the base of the lens flange is supported by an aluminium body
anyway the distance from flange to film plate was corrected by paper sheet at that time

[pico]

Dust shows up in a sharp photo in hard light. I miss that fairly often.

Clean it up using a nylon brush and be happy.

[wlaidlaw]

Wilson,

it is difficult to speak about  microns in tolerance work when the base of the lens flange is supported by an aluminium body

anyway the distance from flange to film plate was corrected by paper sheet at that time

 

JC, Leica must have been aware of paper shimming when they were making non-standard cameras, as they had to adjust each lens mount to each camera. It just appears such a weird concept to me, when in retrospect it would have been just as easy to have a standard 27.80mm flange focal distance lens and adjust the mount of each camera for that to be in focus, as they did from 1931 onwards. There must have been a "light bulb" moment at Wetzlar in mid 1931. 

 

Wilson

[Michael Geschlecht]

In case some folks are saying where would the "O" be to show my lens is standard, it is just under the focus tab. This is an unnumbered 5cm Elmar off my 1931 1C Standard. The "O" on the body is at 12 o'clock on the mount. It has always surprised me that it took Leica 6 years to get round to the idea of a standard flange focal distance for LTM. It now seems such an obvious idea. I would assume that the Standard concept did wonders for Leica sales, not just of bodies but lenses other than 5cm as well. 

 

Wilson

 

Hello Wilson,

 

Modern people, like all of us here on the Forum, have been around for somewhere between 50,000 & 100,000 years.

 

For all of that time, except for the last 5,000 years, there were NO wheels on this Planet.

 

Around 5,000 years ago someone, somewhere in the middle of Asia, thought of the idea of wheels & built some.

 

Retrospectively simple. But nobody thought of them for a really, really long time.

 

And, even 100 years before now, in many places on this Planet, there still were no wheels.

 

Just people carrying things by themselves or on various animals. Or else people, or animals, dragging things along the ground.

 

A lot of things which are simple & reasonable retrospectively are not always so before the fact.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

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[wlaidlaw]

The concept of matching body to lens was alive and kicking at Leica until fairly recently. About 4 years ago, I bought a new 0.95 Noctilux. I determined within about 5 minutes of unpacking it and mounting it on my M240, that the RF focus was not even close to matching the optical focus. I was more that a little irate, given the price of the lens and the fact that someone had supposedly checked it and signed the quality certificate, obviously without bothering. Since all my other RF lenses up to and including a 135 mm focussed perfectly on my M240, it would be reasonable to assume that, unless they were all wrong the same way, the camera was in correct adjustment. Nevertheless Leica wanted me to send both back "so that they could optimise the camera and lens together." The idea of adjusting the camera and lens focus to a standard and not to each other, still seems to have escaped them, which I pointed out. I declined to return the M240 and asked them to adjust the Noctilux to the correct standard, so that it would focus correctly on all my M cameras not just one. It came back perfect. I had a discussion with my contact at the factory, asking if I would be better waiting until the next production batch and getting a new replacement. The advice I got was that a very carefully rectified lens, had a higher probability of 100% correct focus than a new production one. 

 

Wilson