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Barnack Treasure


Timmyjoe

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My Dad died when I was a kid, so anything to do with his life has always had special meaning to me. I found out that David Douglas Duncan was actually "embedded" with my Dad's Marine Division when my Dad fought in the Korean War (see DDD's book, This Is War).  A few years ago I started trying to find the components to put together a camera like the one DDD used for those pictures. Many of you may be familiar with the story of how he visited Japan shortly before he went to Korea, and acquired a 5cm f1.5 Nikkor-S that he mated with his Leica IIIc. The rarity and resultant pricing of the 5cm f1.5 in LTM made me look to the next batch of Nikkor-S 5cm lenses Nikon made, the 5cm f1.4 Nikkor SC. This lens is from the first batch of f1.4 lenses made, and this Leica IIIc is from a batch made in 1948, so possibly the same batch as the one DDD brought to Korea in 1950.

 

Anyway, I now consider it my DDD Korean War camera.

 

LeicaIIIc.jpg

 

Best,

-Tim

Edited by Timmyjoe
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Interesting combination and historically intriguing : btw, having little/no knowledge about the history of the Nikkor RF lenses, I didn't know that Nippon Kogaku was SO quick to make a new 1,4 just after having introduced a 1,5 (and, I've read just now, with a NEW design... Leitz waited 7/8 years to "stretch" the design of the Summarit from 1,5 to 1,4...)

Edited by luigi bertolotti
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I also have a Nikkor 1.4/50, mostly on the IIIg, bought in 1979, so I researched it and this may be of interest.

Sorry, I can't seem to be able to paste the the picture and I didn't jot down where I found this piece of information.

 
 

"Nikkor 1.4/50:

The lenses made for the Nikon rangefinder system are quite numerous. Perhaps the frequent updates have also created many variations. Since the company had already started to apply lens coating as early as 1945, we would assume that all Nikkor lenses made for the Nikon rangefinder cameras were coated from the beginning. So, you may find some of the early Nikkor lenses that were made for the rangefinder cameras has a red 'C' after the first letter which should stand for "coated" (see a picture of my Nikkor-S 5cm f/1.4 lens below). But what is the meaning of the letter after the "Nikkor"?

 

 

 

One way to identify a lens is to look at the identification ring in front the lens where the specification of the lens is shown; such as Nippon Kogaku, focal length, lens speed and the word 'Nikkor' followed by two letters. The first letter if for identifying the lens type (wide-angle or telephoto) or designates the number of lens elements using the Latin alphabet. The letter encodes the number of lens elements used in the optical formula. In fact, many of the Nikkor lenses designed primarily for the Nikon reflex SLR still used this identification until 1974.

 

 

U (Uns) for 1 element
B (Bini) for 2 elements
T (Tres) for 3 elements
Q (Quatour) for 4 elements
P (Pente) for 5 elements
H (Hex) for 6 elements 
S (Septem) for 7 elements
0 (Octo) for 8 elements
N (Novem) for 9 elements
D (Decem) for 10 elements

Note: For most Nikkor lenses made during the Occupation, and for a short time after, Nikon used the words 'Nippon Kogaku Tokyo' on the front ring (see picture at left). After the Occupation this was changed to 'Nippon Kogaku Japan'. Most lenses with 'Made in Occupied Japan' (abbreviates to "MIOJ" for common reference) have no click-stop and the corresponding minimum aperture for these lenses is larger than those with click stop.

Copyright-free images collection © 2001 

"

Edited by octo
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I have played around a bit with a borrowed Nikkor SC 5cm/1.4, kindly lent by a Leica equipment seller. In the end I decided it was too specialised a lens for my use and bought a late Leica LTM Summarit 5cm/f1.5 instead. The Nikkor is optimised for wide open and close distances and used like this it is an excellent performer. However stopped down and at longer distances it was disappointing, with a lot of veiling glare. The Summarit is more difficult to use due to its extreme propensity to flare, which can easily leach all the contrast out of an image but stopped down to to its optimised aperture range of f2.8 to f4, with a good hood and some attention to the incoming light direction, it is a better day to day performer for me, than the Nikkor. I also prefer the extreme swirly bokeh that you can get with the Summarit compared with the more fuzzy bokeh of the Nikkor. 

 

If you are into taking photos of people at fairly short distances either with slow film or in low light, then the Nikkor 5/1.4 lens is the lens for you. If you are into more general scene photography, the Summarit. There is not a great deal of difference in the prices of a good example of each. IMHO the Canon 5cm/f1.5 is not as good as either of these lenses, with the f1.8 "Hiroshi" LTM Canon a better all round performer and the equal of the rigid Summicron V.1. The ultimate LTM fast 50mm is the 1999 special edition V.3 Summilux e46 - one lens to rule them all  :)

 

Wilson

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