I bought a Leitz Elmar 50mm 3.5 lens from 1931/1932, is it legit?

[Khalid Shahin]

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The person I bought it from said they bought it from a seller in Japan a few years ago. And they got the lens CLA'd (Clean, Lubricate, Adjust) this year.

Serial Number: 125167

It weighs 111 grams when there's no caps on it.

It has "50mm" instead of "5cm" written on the front of the lens, which it would indicate that it's an earlier model I believe.

There's an "o" on the barrel by the focus lever, which would indicate that this is a standardized lens mount.

Underneath the focus leaver there's the number 5 (as shown in the picture), I don't know what this means.

I think the focus lever is at the 11 o'clock position? I'm not sure how to tell.

I tested it and found: 105 cm / 41 inch closest focusing distance. The rear plate has distances in feet. I don't know if Leica sent certain countries a different plate, or if it was replaced by a distributor, or if it was replaced in the decades after it was first sold. Interestingly enough there's no "Germany" or "Made in Germany" that I see on other exported lenses.

Full album with more more picture and in higher quality: https://imgur.com/a/bhQcwHI

Is this lens legit? Was the rear plate with "feet" replaced by a 3rd party? And is this really 1931 or 1932?

 

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[jaapv]

That front element looks a bit dodgy on the first two images. 

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[Khalid Shahin]

53 minutes ago, jaapv said:

That front element looks a bit dodgy on the first two images. 

How so? I uploaded a phone pic to better show how it naturally looks.

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Edited November 14, 2021 by Khalid Shahin

[luigi bertolotti]

Welcome to the Forum !

The "5" engraved beneath the focus lever does refer to the real focal length of the lens : there were some standard variations/tolerancings around the nominal 50mm, and those were identified by those digits ; I have not the correspondance between "5" and a certain focal length, but is a well known detail, and a topic discussed in the Forum : someone published those data ("5" and similar digits are called "lens' group") ; if you search with patience in the historica section you can find them. 

The scale in feet is quite normal : Elmar 50 (as all the other lenses) could be ordered with scale in feet or meters... and this endured for many years : the double scale feet/meters started in 1960 around. It was surely possible to exchange the plate with the distance scale (probably, at the factory only) ... but i think is impossible to say if your item underwent this modification... your scale has anyway the normal values for feet : 3,5 (1 meter around) was the standard minimal focus for the Elmar

Here you can see an item of similar age (later, indeed) - scale in feet too, but is a "7 o'clock" , not a "11 o'clock" as yours

https://www.ebay.it/itm/363160378284?hash=item548e0b9bac:g:ChAAAOSwcUJfc33h

The "transition" 11 to 7 o'clock occurred indeed around s/n 130.000 ... in our Wiki section you can find some production data (approximated, for those far years) ; as you can see, they declare Elmar 50mm lenses 11 o' clock in the 122718 - 124870 range... but as I said is not a precise figure... your 125167 can well fit into that group. And I have under my eyes the picture of an Elmar 50 s/n 122694 that looks identical to yours : scale in feet, 11 o'clock, 50mm, no "Germany" engraved on the base : in my opinion, your lens is quite an original one , and dates to 1931 : I see no sign of some Russian fake, if this is what you fear of 😉

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by luigi bertolotti

[willeica]

3 hours ago, Khalid Shahin said:

The person I bought it from said they bought it from a seller in Japan a few years ago. And they got the lens CLA'd (Clean, Lubricate, Adjust) this year.

Serial Number: 125167

It weighs 111 grams when there's no caps on it.

It has "50mm" instead of "5cm" written on the front of the lens, which it would indicate that it's an earlier model I believe.

There's an "o" on the barrel by the focus lever, which would indicate that this is a standardized lens mount.

Underneath the focus leaver there's the number 5 (as shown in the picture), I don't know what this means.

I think the focus lever is at the 11 o'clock position? I'm not sure how to tell.

I tested it and found: 105 cm / 41 inch closest focusing distance. The rear plate has distances in feet. I don't know if Leica sent certain countries a different plate, or if it was replaced by a distributor, or if it was replaced in the decades after it was first sold. Interestingly enough there's no "Germany" or "Made in Germany" that I see on other exported lenses.

Full album with more more picture and in higher quality: https://imgur.com/a/bhQcwHI

Is this lens legit? Was the rear plate with "feet" replaced by a 3rd party? And is this really 1931 or 1932?

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

 

Your item is a 50mm Elmar from about 1932 with a 'bell push ' infinity knob at the 11 O'Clock position which will be confirmed when you screw it onto an LTM camera. The serial number matches the usual range for such items. I have a couple of 11 O'Clock bell push Elmars, one with the serial number 120701* and the other with 130548. The first of these was delivered to Dublin with a II Model D in April 1932. The camera is engraved with the dealer's name, which is also recorded in the Leica Archives. Your lens fits in that serial number range. The engraving on the front of your lens is the same as on my two lenses. The' 5' behind the infinity knob means that the true focal length of the lens is 51 mm. There were feet scale lenses going back to the beginning when they were usually close focus lenses. By the time of this lens they were normal focus lenses. My 120701 is feet scale and my 130548 is metre scale.

Your lens seems to be genuine and checks out in all significant respects.

William 

*A top view of 120701. The number behind the infinity knob is also '5".

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by willeica

[Khalid Shahin]

Thank you for all your help. You guys are really informative. I was worried about the focus knob because I didn't see other lenses that had that at the time, but I'm glad that it's a normal variant. When did the "o" marking show up on the lens mount, and are there any sales listings of a lens without the "o" marking?

[a.noctilux]

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After my notes ...

group 5 for LTM Elmar 3,5/5cm/50mm = measured 51,00mm

group 0 = 50,5mm

group 4 = 50,7mm

group 6 = 51,3mm

[willeica]

1 hour ago, Khalid Shahin said:

Thank you for all your help. You guys are really informative. I was worried about the focus knob because I didn't see other lenses that had that at the time, but I'm glad that it's a normal variant. When did the "o" marking show up on the lens mount, and are there any sales listings of a lens without the "o" marking?

The '0 'dates from about 1931 and dates from the time that the I Model C Standardised was introduced. The lens would have had a '0' and the mount and the camera mount would have also had a '0' on the mounting ring, telling the user that both were matched. Some lenses before that were not standardised but there were an number of systems for indicating whether a non-standardised lens and camera were matched, the most common one involved putting the last 3 digits from the camera serial number on the mount of the lens. This system came in with the non-standardised I Model C around 1930. The lens which you have is standardised one for a standardised camera. 

William 

Edited November 15, 2021 by willeica

[nf3996]

My small collection includes a similar 1931-vintage 50mm f/3.5 Elmar lens, marked in feet, with a standardised '0', and also with a '5' behind its 'bell-push' lever (#122672).

Alan

[nitroplait]

11 hours ago, a.noctilux said:

After my notes ...

group 5 for LTM Elmar 3,5/5cm/50mm = measured 51,00mm

group 0 = 50,5mm

group 4 = 50,7mm

group 6 = 51,3mm

Jerzy is working on a Elmar 50/3.5 for me. It has a "3" stamped which means a focal of 48,6mm - the shortest Elmar 50mm focal length according to his report. The lens originated from a Leica IA from 1929 and was converted together with the camera to a Leica II around 1933.

[a.noctilux]

1 hour ago, nitroplait said:

Jerzy is working on a Elmar 50/3.5 for me. It has a "3" stamped which means a focal of 48,6mm - the shortest Elmar 50mm focal length according to his report. The lens originated from a Leica IA from 1929 and was converted together with the camera to a Leica II around 1933.

I think that Jerzy W. had this charts diffused, for old Leitz lenses, a while back.

so I can add groups for Elmar 3.5/50

3 = 48,6mm

1 = 49,6mm

0 = 50,5mm

...

7 = 51,6mm

8 = 51,9mm

 

[willeica]

3 hours ago, nitroplait said:

Jerzy is working on a Elmar 50/3.5 for me. It has a "3" stamped which means a focal of 48,6mm - the shortest Elmar 50mm focal length according to his report. The lens originated from a Leica IA from 1929 and was converted together with the camera to a Leica II around 1933.

Jerzy and I did an exercise some years ago on 50mm/5cm Elmars and the shortest ones physically were often those with no serial numbers which had been converted from 11 O'Clock to 7 O'Clock. I have one of those on a I Model A that had been converted to a Standard which I have shown here a few times. It has a 29mm barrel length, but the focal length is 49.6 mm (Group 1).  I also have a similar lens which came on its own. Jerzy has recorded two other lenses as having barrel lengths of 28.7 and 28.9 mm. At the other end of the scale some of the lenses had barrel lengths in excess of 32mm. Looking for consistency in early Leicas is a nugatory task. It was very much a craft industry in the early years and looking at the records there are plenty of examples where Barnack and his team were experimenting and testing as they went along. For what it is worth, Jim Lager agrees with me on these points. 

William