Leitz Xenon 5cm f/1.5 Brief Guide - Rumors and Facts

[derleicaman]

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Hello to everyone in the thread! A lot of great information here, and I think we have enough for one if not two articles on the Xenon for the LHSA Viewfinder here. I just finished putting the latest issue of Viewfinder to bed, so time to start planning an article or two.

Please let me know who would like to participate (Tears Everywhere, William, pgk, Alan, anyone else?) and lets make a plan. Please message me or send me an email to lhsaeditor@yahoo.com

 

[willeica]

I'm on a Zoom Call with van Hasbroeck on Thursday. I've put in a general question about the Xenon copyright issue and hopefully he will say something about that. Earlier that day we will have the auction of a Xenon on an X-Ray camera, also in the UK. Will get back to you, Bill, after Thursday.

William

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[Tears Everywhere]

7 hours ago, derleicaman said:

Hello to everyone in the thread! A lot of great information here, and I think we have enough for one if not two articles on the Xenon for the LHSA Viewfinder here. I just finished putting the latest issue of Viewfinder to bed, so time to start planning an article or two.

Please let me know who would like to participate (Tears Everywhere, William, pgk, Alan, anyone else?) and lets make a plan. Please message me or send me an email to lhsaeditor@yahoo.com

 

Hello,
3 months later will be the 100 year anniversary of fast Gauss lens.
OPIC, the World's first F2 gauss design was filed out at Aug 14, 1920.
I am preparing a story about Taylor Hobson, Schneider & Leica, the development from Opic to Summar. Maybe the story of f/1.5 Xenon could put later?

[Pyrogallol]

All this reading about the xenon made me want one. It didn’t take long to find a relatively cheap “user” copy that arrived today.

Four rings, 1938.  A few quick shots on a digital body look similar to the war time f1.5 Sonnar LTM lenses I have, soft or glowey at f1.5 and sharpening up with better contrast by f2.8 or smaller.

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[luigi bertolotti]

2 hours ago, Pyrogallol said:

All this reading about the xenon made me want one... 

 

AH ! 😉 That's an experience i enjoyed too... Forum is a great accelerator for the used market... 😎

[willeica]

The X-Ray Leica with a Xenon sold for £1600 (before premium and taxes) at auction yesterday. I did not bid on it, but I bought a 1949 (year of my birth) first batch Summarit (called Xenon Variante by Thiele) with typical period bad chrome and the US Patent Number on the side of the barrel. It is said to have Taylor, Taylor and Hobson on the side, but I cannot see that in the auction photos. I have later LTM and M mount versions of the lens without such markings. I will report on the lens when it arrives.

William

[Tears Everywhere]

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The official design paper of Summarit.
The 4th glass surface (cemented) was different to Xenon.
 

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[alan mcfall]

Can you say more about the indexed book you show in the photo?  Is it a Wetzlar record, author, other lenses documented??   thanks

[willeica]

1 hour ago, Tears Everywhere said:

The official design paper of Summarit.
The 4th glass surface (cemented) was different to Xenon.
 

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Looking at the side tabs this appears to be a series of records of different lens types. Your file or theirs? Whatever it is, it looks like someone has been very methodical. Based on my experience and having been in the Archives myself and having seen some of the books this does not look like one of theirs. One thing I do know is that the camera records do not identify the actual lens issued with any camera, but rather just the lens type.

I see two dates on the above drawing 1935 and 1952. The Summarit was introduced in 1949, which adds to the mystery. Had Leitz always planned to issue its own slightly varied design. Did early Summarits use any old parts?  Plenty of intrigue there. 

Your article looks like it will be a blockbuster.

William

[derleicaman]

Very interesting binder! It looks like something put together by someone “on the inside” but not in the official archives. It looks like these are all Wetzlar designs, given the “B” project number designator. Midland designs have a “C” designator.

What, pray tell, is the origin and any other details you can provide of this binder?

Edited May 26, 2020 by derleicaman
Punctuauin

[willeica]

5 hours ago, derleicaman said:

Very interesting binder! It looks like something put together by someone “on the inside” but not in the official archives. It looks like these are all Wetzlar designs, given the “B” project number designator. Midland designs have a “C” designator.

What, pray tell, is the origin and any other details you can provide of this binder?

Good luck with that Bill. I have heard that the 'Leica Museum' is open, but the contents seem to be two photo exhibitions of work by Wolff and Koudelka. Nothing wrong with that, of course,  but the museum with the cameras, lenses and prototypes which feature in the book by Lars (which I have reviewed for two different publications on this side of the pond) appears to be some way off. In response to my placed question at the recent Zoom call, Dr Kaufmann mentioned some building works being required. Also, I have not been in touch with the Archives for some time. Do you know if they are still functioning? Any updates on these matters would be most welcome.

William

[Tears Everywhere]

Many years ago, those documents with about 20 Leica prototype lenses & cameras showed in an auction. It was believed as official design data of lots Leica lenses including prototype, each glass used, aberration coefficients, ray trace. 

About the date William mentioned, it is a mystery. But coincidentally, the TTH design US2019985 was patented in 1935, expired in 1952.

[willeica]

1 hour ago, Tears Everywhere said:

But coincidentally, the TTH design US2019985 was patented in 1935, expired in 1952.

Well done to whoever picked these up at auction. I always feel that such documents obtained at auction can prove useful in the longer term and these are now very valuable documents. Was it a coincidence that these two years (1935 and 1952) appear on the document? I should have my early Summarit from 1949 with the patent info soon. Have you checked whether the patent details disappeared from Summarits in 1952 to coincide with the expiration of the patent? Despite the 'different design' for the Summarit compared to the Xenon, Leitz/Leica were always cautious about possible infringements, even though they never pursued the many infringements of their own copyrights. That is a story which runs from the 1920s right up to the present, from I Mod A fakes right up to cheap Chinese copies of the Summicrons and Summiluxes.

William

Edited May 26, 2020 by willeica

[Michael Geschlecht]

Hello William,

Altho I think that they were reasonably strict about maintaining the exclusivity of the "M" mount when they could.

best Regards,

Michael

[willeica]

9 hours ago, Michael Geschlecht said:

Hello William,

Altho I think that they were reasonably strict about maintaining the exclusivity of the "M" mount when they could.

best Regards,

Michael

Thanks Michael. I would be interested in whether Leica/Leitz ever actually took legal action in respect of M mount patents. The patents on these may have expired now, as cheap Chinese copies with the M mount seem to be everywhere these days

With the LTM mount, the newly born Soviet Union had cancelled foreign patents and then some years later in the early 1930s cameras with LTM mounts were produced in the Soviet Union, initially for the home market, but after WWII these found their way into other markets. After WWII the Allies cancelled Axis patents. The main beneficiaries of this were companies in Japan, which was, itself, part of the Axis. Japanese companies like Canon had been producing LTM copies before WWII, eg the Canon Hansa models. British companies like Reid produced LTM cameras, but they were not commercially successful. It is interesting that in the middle of all this in 1949 Leica was cognisant of the copyrights held by Taylor, Taylor & Hobson in Britain and the US. T,T &H  produced an LTM lens for the Reid cameras, of course.

One must assume that the 'L Mount Alliance' is bound up with financial agreements and copyrights and permissions etc, involving mutual agreements to pursue breaches of copyright.

This is an interesting topic which extends beyond Leica. I am not aware of very many successful breach of copyright cases in the history of camera and lens production.

William 

[pgk]

1 hour ago, willeica said:

This is an interesting topic which extends beyond Leica. I am not aware of very many successful breach of copyright cases in the history of camera and lens production.

In the UK patents seem to have been a mechanism to reward the favoured few until 1852, when a change in patent law made it easier to obtain patents which could protect inventions for up to 14 years (depending on how much the patentee paid overall - in instalments!). But challenging a patent might well have been a complex and expensive business and only viable if the value of the patent was going to be large. I have found though that patents were used to block imports of products (such as photographic lenses) which would have breached a UK patent even if they legally held patents elsewhere and a comparison of patent documentation would have made this quite easy). This was because for each imported item a fee would need to be paid to the UK patent holder, so in this case there was money in it I suspect. It also helped UK sales of UK products. Whether a similar situation existed elsewhere I don't know but I expect so. Later I think that patent law changed. My father once worked for a large business which had a 'patent breaking' department whose job it was to show that a patent was invalid for technical reasons.

[Tears Everywhere]

22 hours ago, willeica said:

Have you checked whether the patent details disappeared from Summarits in 1952 to coincide with the expiration of the patent?

In my record, the last batch of TTH Summarit came with serial number #95xxxx, made in 1952.

[willeica]

1 hour ago, pgk said:

In the UK patents seem to have been a mechanism to reward the favoured few until 1852, when a change in patent law made it easier to obtain patents which could protect inventions for up to 14 years (depending on how much the patentee paid overall - in instalments!). But challenging a patent might well have been a complex and expensive business and only viable if the value of the patent was going to be large. I have found though that patents were used to block imports of products (such as photographic lenses) which would have breached a UK patent even if they legally held patents elsewhere and a comparison of patent documentation would have made this quite easy). This was because for each imported item a fee would need to be paid to the UK patent holder, so in this case there was money in it I suspect. It also helped UK sales of UK products. Whether a similar situation existed elsewhere I don't know but I expect so. Later I think that patent law changed. My father once worked for a large business which had a 'patent breaking' department whose job it was to show that a patent was invalid for technical reasons.

This goes back to the very beginnings of photography. At the very start we had the French making the Daguerreotype available copyright free in 1839 except in England, where a law was needed for this and could not be passed, allowing Richard Beard to pick up the rights for the sum of £800. Fox Talbot took out a patent on his calotype process, but instead of helping his business it restricted it and eventually he agreed to remove most of the copyright restrictions under pressure from the Earl of Rosse and other 'worthies'. By that time, however, the Wet Plate process invented by Scott Archer had taken over. Development in the field of photography has been constant since the 1840s and the value of copyrights in the area of photographic equipment is questionable at best.

39 minutes ago, Tears Everywhere said:

In my record, the last batch of TTH Summarit came with serial number #95xxxx, made in 1952.

That fits with the expiry of the T, T &H copyright. if you really want to solve mysteries in this range you could also look at the aperture ring arrangements for the Xenon and the Summarits and the left, right and left again and the changes with the fixed and moving scales, along with 'heavy fronts ' on the X-Ray variants of the Xenon. Van Hasbroeck attempted to describe these and, to his credit, he is the only writer to have attempted this. There are other variations, though, beyond what he has recorded. Two big mysteries, therefore, to add  to your endeavour. Why were the differences in the design of the lenses between the Xenon and the Summarit (including the aperture direction) not sufficient to allow the removal of the copyright acknowledgement? The second one relates to the aperture manoeuvres and whether these happened for technical or for copyright reasons or were they in anticipation of the Summilux, which no doubt was being planned when the last aperture change was made. In many ways the Xenon was the Grandad or the Great Grandad of the first Summilux and the element arrangements were not too dissimilar .

Sorry for throwing these in, as you will have more than enough to do in respect of the copyright issues, but there is a fascinating line of developments here which went on for over a quarter of a century. 

William

 

[pgk]

9 minutes ago, willeica said:

..... the value of copyrights in the area of photographic equipment is questionable at best.

Indeed, except that it might be 'relatively' simple to block an import of a well-known manufacturer and attempting to do so would create adverse publicity which would be far worse if upheld. Sometimes it might be simpler to accept a degree of ambiguity between two designs and their potential to spark off a patent row, and simply acknowledge a patent and pay the royalty. Today it would be very much more difficult to enforce an import block because of so many private direct imports.

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[willeica]

1 hour ago, pgk said:

Indeed, except that it might be 'relatively' simple to block an import of a well-known manufacturer and attempting to do so would create adverse publicity which would be far worse if upheld. Sometimes it might be simpler to accept a degree of ambiguity between two designs and their potential to spark off a patent row, and simply acknowledge a patent and pay the royalty. Today it would be very much more difficult to enforce an import block because of so many private direct imports.

The real issue is that design factors rapidly become commonplace and are no longer unique after a short period of time. The only unique factors would be things like lens mounts or a claim that a device will work with another device which is already patented. Substitutes which are just as good also emerge rapidly. I think that in this case while it is interesting to know why Leitz put certain markings on lenses made 85 years ago, proving that not to do so would have been a breach of copyright is well nigh impossible. The only real proof might be that money changed hands which would indicate an acknowledgement or contract of some kind.

I await the magnum opus of Tears Everywhere with interest.

William