Xenon Question

[mickjazz]

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A friend in Florida offered me a 4 ring xenon with the front ring completely brassed

 

He thinks that the lens may have originally had a black ring similar to the black rim summars.

 

Was there such a xenon with a flat black front ring ?

 

I have a few xenons and passed.

[Hello]

The similar Kreuznachs had a brass ring. Maybe something to do with that?

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[mickjazz]

Possibly. Yeah maybe it was always brass and not worn chrome

[luigi bertolotti]

About the Xenon, it must be taken into account that its manufacturing was a rather complex process to setup, given that the original Schneider design was licensed to the British firm Tayolr Taylor & Hobson which was the only concern who had in its availability the special glasses and the toolings to machine/assemble them… I do not remember exactly… but seems to me that several Leitz Xenons were actually completely BUILT in  Britain… so some choices in term of metal finishing could have been different from the standards of Leitz factory…

Sorry… but don't remember well this story… Wilson Laidlaw probably has more detailed infos about.. I am almost sure that it was him that, some time ago, posted something about in the Forum.

[TomB_tx]

I've read (I think Puts) that there are no Leitz factory records about manufacturing the Xenon, so they were likely outsourced to Schneider. Post-war, however, the Summarit was made by Leitz.

[Pecole]

To add some information, I selected in the archives of my former collection, some images - probably already published here - of various Xenon I had, both three or four rings. What is especially interesting and intriguing is the proximity of serials of the lens engraved with Taylor-Hobson patent (nº376648, four rings) and the one without (nº376562, three rings). Also are noticeable the engravings D.R.P.a. (pending German patent) and D.R.P. (German patent) on the later nº490145.

 

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[AdamSinger]

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About the Xenon, it must be taken into account that its manufacturing was a rather complex process to setup, given that the original Schneider design was licensed to the British firm Tayolr Taylor & Hobson which was the only concern who had in its availability the special glasses and the toolings to machine/assemble them… I do not remember exactly… but seems to me that several Leitz Xenons were actually completely BUILT in  Britain… so some choices in term of metal finishing could have been different from the standards of Leitz factory…

Sorry… but don't remember well this story… Wilson Laidlaw probably has more detailed infos about.. I am almost sure that it was him that, some time ago, posted something about in the Forum.

For what its worth, ……. my reading of Dennis Laney’s collectors guide, and he goes into some detail, is that the Xenon was a Taylor Hobson lens, licensed to Schneider, and then to Leitz.

Erwin Puts implies it is a Schneider Lens, but Laney is pretty clear that the Xenon came from a Taylor Hobson patent.

But may well have all this wrong.

Cheers

[wlaidlaw]

The original Xenon type design was by Horace William Lee of the Kallista Company in London, freelance optics designers, mainly for the movie industry and was done around 1932. This original lens was a movie lens for taking dreamy close ups with a lovely swirly out of focus, of leading ladies during the making of a movie and was manufactured by both Taylor, Taylor and Hobson and Cooke Optical in Leicester, England. The original lens would have only had sufficient coverage for the then standard movie frame of 24mm x 18mm. At some later point the lens was recomputed for full frame still coverage of 24 x 36mm. I have not been able to find out what the linkage between Taylor, Taylor and Hobson and Schneider was for this lens, but Xenon is certainly a registered trade name for Schneider. However, the patents only mention T, T & H, who I suspect may have done the re-computation rather than Kallista. It would appear that not a lot of consideration was given during the design of the full frame version, to reducing spherical aberration at the edges of the image or to flare reduction because the Xenon is fairly notorious for both and markedly inferior in both these aspects, to the Zeiss 5cm/f1.5 Sonnar. The upside is the marvellous bokeh, IMHO even better than an f1.2 Noctilux. Just after the war, Leica did a very minor update, with a view to reducing flare and improving contrast. The redesigned  lens, the Summarit 5cm/f1.5, was designed from the start, to be coated, sadly with Leica's "soft as half melted cheese" drip coating. The flare is a bit less than the Xenon but the centre contrast is noticeably increased, when used wide open. 

 

The Xenon is quite a difficult lens to use because of its propensity to flare, low contrast and veiling glare, best suited to black and white photography. Unless you feel you really have to have a pre-war lens, I would recommend the later Summarit as being a more sensible buy. The round aperture 16 blade diaphragm was quite generously lubricated from new and has to be lubricated at a service. As a result, it is inevitable that both Xenon and Summarit will have lubricant contamination of the air surfaces either side of the diaphragm, unless recently serviced. It would be sensible to factor the cost of a clean and service into any purchase of either lens. Unless you are quite lucky, the front element of the coated Summarit, may need re-coating, which usually more than doubles the cost of a service. 

 

Wilson

[wlaidlaw]

One interesting factoid, in 1939, T, T & H together with their associate company Cooke Optical (now a subsidiary of T, T & H) claimed that they made over 80% of the worlds movie camera lenses. They designed the world's first zoom movie lens as far back as 1932. 

 

Wilson

[Hello]

So, would a Xenon have a completely brassed filter ring? I'd guess most Xenon's were all brass constructions so it would make sense that maybe the front ring would wear down to brass.

[wlaidlaw]

I have never seen a Xenon where all the chrome had worn off the front ring but I have never seen a black front ring one either. I wonder if someone had removed the chrome with the intention of painting it black, in an attempt to reduce the flare but never got round to the painting. 

 

Wilson

[Hello]

I have never seen a Xenon where all the chrome had worn off the front ring but I have never seen a black front ring one either. I wonder if someone had removed the chrome with the intention of painting it black, in an attempt to reduce the flare but never got round to the painting. 

 

Wilson

 

That's an interesting idea. It is unusual I guess as I've never seen a full brass filter ring either.

[AdamSinger]

The original Xenon type design was by Horace William Lee of the Kallista Company in London, freelance optics designers, mainly for the movie industry and was done around 1932. This original lens was a movie lens for taking dreamy close ups with a lovely swirly out of focus, of leading ladies during the making of a movie and was manufactured by both Taylor, Taylor and Hobson and Cooke Optical in Leicester, England. The original lens would have only had sufficient coverage for the then standard movie frame of 24mm x 18mm. At some later point the lens was recomputed for full frame still coverage of 24 x 36mm. I have not been able to find out what the linkage between Taylor, Taylor and Hobson and Schneider was for this lens, but Xenon is certainly a registered trade name for Schneider. However, the patents only mention T, T & H, who I suspect may have done the re-computation rather than Kallista. It would appear that not a lot of consideration was given during the design of the full frame version, to reducing spherical aberration at the edges of the image or to flare reduction because the Xenon is fairly notorious for both and markedly inferior in both these aspects, to the Zeiss 5cm/f1.5 Sonnar. The upside is the marvellous bokeh, IMHO even better than an f1.2 Noctilux. Just after the war, Leica did a very minor update, with a view to reducing flare and improving contrast. The redesigned  lens, the Summarit 5cm/f1.5, was designed from the start, to be coated, sadly with Leica's "soft as half melted cheese" drip coating. The flare is a bit less than the Xenon but the centre contrast is noticeably increased, when used wide open. 

 

The Xenon is quite a difficult lens to use because of its propensity to flare, low contrast and veiling glare, best suited to black and white photography. Unless you feel you really have to have a pre-war lens, I would recommend the later Summarit as being a more sensible buy. The round aperture 16 blade diaphragm was quite generously lubricated from new and has to be lubricated at a service. As a result, it is inevitable that both Xenon and Summarit will have lubricant contamination of the air surfaces either side of the diaphragm, unless recently serviced. It would be sensible to factor the cost of a clean and service into any purchase of either lens. Unless you are quite lucky, the front element of the coated Summarit, may need re-coating, which usually more than doubles the cost of a service. 

 

Wilson

Thank you a response that makes reading this forum worthwhile

[mickjazz]

The lens in question is still listed on the big auction site. I looked at the auction images again and it's hard to tell what happened to the front rim. However, when chrome wears it normally doesn't wear as uniformly as this lens.

[luigi bertolotti]

One interesting factoid, in 1939, T, T & H together with their associate company Cooke Optical (now a subsidiary of T, T & H) claimed that they made over 80% of the worlds movie camera lenses. They designed the world's first zoom movie lens as far back as 1932. 

 

Wilson

Wilson... I read time ago that the first zoom cine lens (16mm) was the Vario_Glaukar from Busch  in 1930-31... was the TTH-Cooke zoom a 35mm cine lens ?

Edited July 31, 2018 by luigi bertolotti

[wlaidlaw]

Wilson... I read time ago that the first zoom cine lens (16mm) was the Vario_Glaukar from Busch  in 1930-31... was the TTH-Cooke zoom a 35mm cine lens ?

 

Luigi, 

 

I think both the 80% figure and the zoom lens, would apply to the professional 35mm cine market and not the 16/9.5/8mm market, although Cooke Optical was fairly active in the 30's and 50's in the 16mm C mount lens market. 

 

Wilson

[alan mcfall]

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My Xenon collection. 23 in all, I guess I have always had a soft spot for them.  There were perhaps a very few early prototypes in nickle finish, and the first batch of 5, 270001-005 ( 270004 is in the Leitz museum). My best calculation of total production is 6403. Near the end of production, 491,xxx Leitz used some of these lenses on the X-ray cameras, I suspose the large aperature was a positive for them.

One story was that delivery was started without a suitable lens cap  available with the Leica stamp.  A black plastic cap, code XENCA, was used until the chrome Leica cap was preparred. The photo shows a black cap that I think is the early XENCA. The same code was used for the normal chrome cap.

 

Here we have some Xenon folding hoods, including New York marked chrome ones.  The folding hood was not initially available, the April 1937 catalog reports that it is in progress. The hood from the 73 Hektor was suggested, it fits and is reversible.  A quick check on a viewer does not show interferrence with the wider angle Xenon light path.

 

Any further  information or corrections are always appreciated.

[wlaidlaw]

If needing a service it is essential that both the Xenon or Summarit only be sent to people who really know what they are doing (more so than other lenses). These lenses are sometimes very difficult to take apart and apparently lens rebuilders wake up at three o'clock in morning, having a nightmare that they have let the 16 blade diaphragm drop on the floor off their workbench and it has "self disassembled" into its myriad parts. 

 

Wilson