Can anyone help me identify this lens?

[Chris H]

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Hi there. New to the forum and tried a search but I’m sort of overwhelmed with details and can’t find a match. 
 

About 20 years ago I stumbled across an old Beseler MX45 that someone threw out on a curb along with a box of enlarger lenses. I talked to the guy that threw it out, he had simply lost interest in film photography and no one would buy his stuff. Despite of the obvious foreshadowing... I loaded it up in my car and took it home.
 

 In the box was a Leitz Wetzlar Summicron 1:2/50 screwed onto a lens board. I tried to find out a little more about it but wasn’t all that savvy at searching out lenses. So I put it all in a box and forgot about it because I never got to build that darkroom and the Beseler sat in the attic. 
 

Fast forward to last month. We moved to a new house, I sold that enlarger and boxes of darkroom equipment for around $125 and felt lucky to get that much. However, one item I missed was this little Summicron. It was in a different box that I found in a closet the other day. I did a  few searches and really can’t find much information other than the fact that it appears to have been made in 1960. I’m also wondering if it’s actually for an enlarger at all now. I can’t find any photos that look like it, however I do see images of Summicrons that “mostly” look like it. However they have extra fancy items like a focus ring. 

I would really like to use it at some point in my life. I’d hate to think I’ve had a great little fixed lens sitting in a box for 20 years that I never used because I thought it was an enlarger lens. However, I’d also hate to spend hours trying to convince myself that this enlarger lens would somehow work on a camera body. Life is a delicate balance. 
 

I can absolutely add more photos, but I don’t want to be the guy that spams the board on my first post. 
 

Regards,

 

Chris Hasty

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[willeica]

Looks like a Rigid Summicron lens head from 1960 waiting for a focus mount to come by.

William

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[luigi bertolotti]

Welcome to the forum !! This is a lens well known to Leitz collectors : the Summicron 50 of the first "rigid" type : but it is the lensheda only, which was unscrewable from the mount (with focusing helicoid and rangefinder coupling) : the mount, of course, was for Leica M cameras. This facility was made to use the lenshead only on various accessories (typically, for near focusing needs) ; you can find many infos on this legendary lens. I don't remember if Leitz did sell also the lenshead only, which of course could be used to fit othe cameras, like in your case.

[spydrxx]

The serial number dates it to 1960. To me it looks like a lens head removed from its focusing helicoid. Sorry I can't be more helpful, perhaps others can chime in.

[pgk]

I'm sure that I've seen the focus mechanism for such a lens on eBay in the past. If you watch eBay you may find one eventually. You may need to get a technician to adjust it if you do but it would be well worth trying to unite it with such a mount.

[Chris H]

Fantastic info!

 

I appreciate you all confirming what I suspected. I guessed it was one part of a greater whole, but couldn’t find any photos showing the two separated. 
 

I’m thinking service would be in order. Now that I have a better idea of what to research I can proceed. 
 

Again, thanks to all for the information. 
Adding a side view photo in case someone in a similar situation ever finds this post in a search. 

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[sandro]

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Perhaps you can identify what is engraved on the lowest part of the lens. On my lens it says 51,9 N, to indicate the actual focal point of the lens.

Lex

[wda]

Chris, welcome to the forum. 

At one time I separated my 50 mm Summicron lens unit to use on my BOWUM-M copy-legs, for photo-copying original old photographs in sizes A4, A5 and A6. In 2012 in this forum or its predecessor,  there was a topic which mentioned this device.

[luigi bertolotti]

Chris, this is a picture of an item of mine displaying one of the smartest accessories made for a lenshead like yours (btw, from the serial numbers... can be that this lens and yours were built in the same month.. or even in the same week. 😉) : a near focusing accessory (with Rangefinder coupling to 50 cm) on which you mount the Summicron lenshead removed from its mount (at right) : an accessory introduced around 60 years ago... which is perfectly usable still on the newest Leica M digital.

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Edited February 18, 2021 by luigi bertolotti

[Chris H]

1 hour ago, sandro said:

Perhaps you can identify what is engraved on the lowest part of the lens. On my lens it says 51,9 N, to indicate the actual focal point of the lens.

Lex

The engraving appears to 51,9 N as well. At first I thought it was a V... however the leading leg of the N is just very faint. That's a great feature to be aware of.

[willeica]

1 hour ago, Chris H said:

The engraving appears to 51,9 N as well. At first I thought it was a V... however the leading leg of the N is just very faint. That's a great feature to be aware of.

This might have been the equivalent of the earlier system for correcting for the true focal lengths. 51.9 or 51, 9 under the German system would be the last one on the list as below:

This would have been corrected with the focus mount which may be what the 'N' is for. In earlier lenses from about the early 1930s onwards a code number was engraved under the infinity knob so that the technician could put on the appropriate mount to make it into a 50mm. Barnack and his team had been playing around with different focal length variations and all of this is described in the book Oskar Barnack - From the Idea to the Leica by Ulf Richter translated by Rolf Fricke. This disappeared in the 1950s, but may have continued on in the factory for certain models, particularly those with removable heads like the Rigid and DR Summicrons. Jerzy might like to add a comment.

PS. I've just checked my 50 DR and it also has 51,9 N on the bottom of the lens head. The focus mount does not have an N , but it has a serial number which matches exactly the serial number on the front of the lens which sort of confirms that these two were matched. Perhaps Lex (Sandro) could check his lens mount as it also has 51,9 N on the lens. 

William

Edited February 19, 2021 by willeica

[sandro]

William, my focus mount has a neatly printed number, which indeed as matching with the serial number on the front. On older lenses there used to be a part of the serial number engraved loosely on the focus mount to get both parts together as well.

Lex

[romualdo]

Here's my 1960 rigid dual range cron - it's also a 51.9 (the 1 look so much like a 7 but the euro dash through the 7 is the giveaway - even though I live in Australia I adopted stroking my 7s back in the 70s). Also, the lens has the matching serial number in the mount - was that only done for the DR crons or all of them?

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[jerzy]

vor 5 Stunden schrieb willeica:

This might have been the equivalent of the earlier system for correcting for the true focal lengths. 51.9 or 51, 9 under the German system would be the last one on the list as below:

 

William,l the table is for Elmar 5cm f 3,5 LTM only (for ex - Elmar 3,5 in bayonett mount has 2 gruops only , X and Y). While Leitz was more or less naming groups consistenly for various lenses it was "more or less" only.
For Summicron focal length of 51,9mm is group 8 or 19

[luigi bertolotti]

5 hours ago, romualdo said:

Here's my 1960 rigid dual range cron - it's also a 51.9 (the 1 look so much like a 7 but the euro dash through the 7 is the giveaway - even though I live in Australia I adopted stroking my 7s back in the 70s). Also, the lens has the matching serial number in the mount - was that only done for the DR crons or all of them?

 

 

I think it was for all the Summicrons, at least for a certain time : my 1.986.334 (standard) has the s/n in the mount as well as my DR 1.785.704 (the one above displayed)

[willeica]

2 hours ago, jerzy said:

William,l the table is for Elmar 5cm f 3,5 LTM only (for ex - Elmar 3,5 in bayonett mount has 2 gruops only , X and Y). While Leitz was more or less naming groups consistenly for various lenses it was "more or less" only.
For Summicron focal length of 51,9mm is group 8 or 19

I am fully aware of that, Jerzy. I was just pointing out that this seemed to be an equivalent thing as the figure 51,9 can be related to both. I think that the phrase ‘more or less’ about gets it. Do you have any comment on the matching of focus mounts? In the case of my 50 DR and others mentioned above there is a matching SN. I don’t see any sign of a focus group, but I’m assuming that the identical SNs indicate that the focus mount and lens head are matched.

William

[jerzy]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb willeica:

Do you have any comment on the matching of focus mounts?

no sorry William, I do not have any info on this

[Pecole]

No idea if it can help in any way, but I publish here three images of a 35mm Summicron for projection I had in my collection.

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[willeica]

26 minutes ago, jerzy said:

no sorry William, I do not have any info on this

Thanks Jerzy. My Rigid Summicron from 1962 has matching SNs on the lens head and the focus mount and the following etchings at the bottom of the lens head ' 19N' and what looks like '56 M' but that could be a botched attempt at '51.6'. The alphabetic codes are fascinating. I had not really noticed them before. I might ask Jim Lager about them. 

PS I have just looked at my 50DR lens head again in daylight and while it is somewhat obscured by some material on the base it seems to have 'C 11' and '24' etched on the base. The mystery deepens

William

Edited February 19, 2021 by willeica

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[sandro]

9 hours ago, romualdo said:

Here's my 1960 rigid dual range cron - it's also a 51.9 (the 1 look so much like a 7 but the euro dash through the 7 is the giveaway - even though I live in Australia I adopted stroking my 7s back in the 70s). Also, the lens has the matching serial number in the mount - was that only done for the DR crons or all of them?

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I agree with Luigi that it was common for all Summicron 50mm lenses. My Summicron is the rigid type, not a DR. It shows exactly the same neat printed number on the focus mount as you showed us. Does anyone have an idea what the N (if it is a N) stand for?

Lex