Non-Leica 39mm LTM lenses

[willeica]

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11 hours ago, UliWer said:

Have you ever seen the "Coupling device to enable Contax long focus lenses to be  on the Leica Camera with dead accurate rangefinder coupling" mentioned in the Stewartry advertisement?

P.S.: More about Stewartry here: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Stewartry  I think the "Camera Wiki" is a good source for information about historic cameras and lenses.

No, Uli, I have not seen this. As you will see, from the link which you posted. the company was wound up in 1950, so the chances of finding the mount for putting Contax lenses on Leicas are very slim. You can see the Contax mount here, so presumably they offered something similar to the mount for the Trinol to adapt Contax lenses for use on Leicas. In this case the lens is, of course, a British made Ross lens. 

https://www.leitz-auction.com/en/Ross-London-f.-Contax-Definex-3.5-3-1-2-91mm/AI-35-37847

1 hour ago, pgk said:

Stweartry were in essence an engineering business which branched out into photographic equipment. They seem to have worked in aluminium and bought in the optics from Taylor, Taylor & Hobson's 'subsidiary' National Optical Company (perhaps this name was a WW2 way of spreading confusion or had some other intention - I've not been able to fully discover why it was formed).

Having owned a couple of Trinol 105mm lenses I can say that they were fairly typical of their time; centrally fine with fall off towards the edges and of somewhat low contrast. But in WW2 and post war austerity years they filled a gap in a difficult market and as such seem to have been somewhat successful for a time at least. As time progressed though, their optics do not seem to have kept up with others and as imports eased and with British optical manufacturers facing hard times, with little R&D into lenses suitable for miniature cameras, and the eventual purchase of many optical manufacturers by the Rank organisation, Stweratry probably found that they had no suppliers able to provide suitable optics to enable them to continue in the photographic sector. They produced some other photographic (and a few engineering) items some of which regularly crop up on ebay and are usually fairly moderately priced. What is unique about Stewartry lenses is that they are marked "Made in Scotland" and as such are probably the only lenses for which this claim is made. Today they would have to be careful beause the NOC optics were most likely produced in Leicester, in England, and it is only the focus mount which was actually fabricated in Glasgow!

Yes, Paul, the lens is not Scottish, just the mount. I agree with your comments about the Trinol, but it is about on a par with most telephotos from that era. I'm not sure why the National Optical Company was established. The Taylor and Hobson 2 inch f2 Anastigmat (which I have) is a fine lens and, indeed, it is the best part of any Reid which is carrying one. 

The pre-war Ross and Dallmeyer lenses can also produce fine images, even the 3 inch Dallmeyer which was made with a C mount for cine.

3 inch Dallmeyer on an M10

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And the 4 inch Teleros lens on an M10

William 

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[TomB_tx]

Here's an Astro Berlin I inherited from my uncle. that O posted some years ago:

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[UliWer]

This doesn‘t look like a 39mm LTM lens, or does it?

[zeitz]

1 hour ago, UliWer said:

This doesn‘t look like a 39mm LTM lens, or does it?

?  The Astro-Berlin Identoskop reflex housing is an L39 LTM mount, specifically made for screw mount Leicas.

[nitroplait]

On 12/12/2024 at 10:09 PM, willeica said:

Post war advertisement for British Stewartry lenses which does not mention prices. 

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Review of the Stewartry 10.5 cm f3.5 lens from 1947.

 

Interesting info about the 105mm. Mine looks a little different: Black painted central part of the barrel instead of chrome.

 

[Pyrogallol]

I had two Trinol lenses and they had different black and chrome parts.

"Non-Leitz Leica Thread-Mount Lenses" by Marc James Small is very comprehensive about such lenses, though it doesnot cover the Japanese manufacturers.

Edited December 15, 2024 by Pyrogallol

[UliWer]

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Am 15.12.2024 um 16:58 schrieb Pyrogallol:

"Non-Leitz Leica Thread-Mount Lenses" by Marc James Small is very comprehensive about such lenses, though it doesnot cover the Japanese manufacturers.

Yes, Small's book from 1997 is the only reference to these lenses outside the web I know, though its omission of the whole Japanese production, which is the most interesting, is a big drawback. On many European items which are not so well known it is also very short, e,g. just one short mention without further description of the Trinol.

Rodenstock from Munich had produced their own cameras before WWII and after the war lenses for projectors and enlargers and cine cameras. Under the name of Rodenstock there is still a small production of lenses for large format cameras.

For 39mm LTM there is (certainly) only one outlier from Rodenstock:

The Rodenstock-Heligon 1:2.8 f=35mm:

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This is a small though heavy lens, smaller than the early 1:3.5 Summaron. In spite of its attractive opening of 1:2.8 it was never popular during the times of the screw-mount Leica and therefore rather rare today. The performance is only slightly behind the famous 1:2.8 Summaron. It takes A36-filters and the FOOKH hood fits perfectly. Some examples with the Heligon here: 

Small's book (p.55) also mentions a 50mm f/2.0 Heligon, though I never found any trace of such a lens with original 39mm LTM mount. There might be some 1:2/50mm Heligons for the Arriflex cine camera or other cameras converted to LTM mount.

 

[Ecar]

3 hours ago, UliWer said:

Small's book (p.55) also mentions a 50mm f/2.0 Heligon, though I never found any trace of such a lens with original 39mm LTM mount. There might be some 1:2/50mm Heligons for the Arriflex cine camera or other cameras converted to LTM mount.

I haven't seen a 50/2 Heligon in LTM either. AFAIK however, they were available for the Kodak Retina and the Agfa Karat. I have a Karat version converted to M. 

On a separate note, the Schneider-Kreuznach Xenogon 35/2.8 in LTM bears more than a passing resemblance to the Rodenstock Heligon 35/2.8. IIRC, both are also 6e/4g designs.

[UliWer]

vor 58 Minuten schrieb Ecar:

On a separate note, the Schneider-Kreuznach Xenogon 35/2.8 in LTM bears more than a passing resemblance to the Rodenstock Heligon 35/2.8. IIRC, both are also 6e/4g designs.

Probably the Heligon, Xenogon and the Summaron 1:2.8/35mm all share the same double Gaussian design and will perform on the same level. The Xenogon seems to be the rarest of them.

[UliWer]

Once I looked for differences between the Heligon, the Summaron and the LTM Canon 1:2.8/35mm - and could not really find much. 

With M10, strong crops from the center at f/2.8 

Heligon

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Summaron:

 

Canon:

 

And now strong crops from the corner:

Heligon

 

Summaron:

 

Canon:

 

[chris_livsey]

On 12/15/2024 at 3:58 PM, Pyrogallol said:

"Non-Leitz Leica Thread-Mount Lenses" by Marc James Small is very comprehensive about such lenses, though it doesnot cover the Japanese manufacturers.

Regrettably the only copy I can locate here in the UK (although not from the UK) is over £250, the link will expire once sold:

Non-leitz Leica Thread-mount Lenses - AbeBooks

Libraries here are now reluctant to put the work in for locating copies of "rare" books compared to how they would relish the task at one time and charge handsomely for even a token "try".

 

[UliWer]

The offer in your link looks very cheap compared to this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Non-Leitz-Leica-Thread-Mount-Lenses-James/dp/3930359472?ref_=ast_author_dp

It looks as if books which have something like "Leica" in their title were the most profitable market of the future...😏

[sandro]

Amazing that the price of the book by Small has gone up so much! I bought it several years ago, not sure how much I paid but not nearly as much as in those examples asked. It is a nice book but I share the criticism that for instance the Japanese production was left out. Also it is not really clear why certain lens manufacturers get a description, whereas others are only mentioned.

On a positive note: text and images together are helpful finding out about quite a few lens production firms, at least for me it was helpful.

Lex

[BernardC]

That book isn't worth 1/20 of those prices. It's just a list of some lenses that the author has heard of, ignoring entire countries and continents. Plus a few name-drops to James Lager.

However, I will gladly sell you my copy at a "below-market" price!

[nitroplait]

I remember that Marc James Small's aversion against Japanese manufactures was kind of funny and a little scary when the subject occasionally popped up on his Rollei mail list.

Anyway, I don't think pricing on many of these relatively rare books necessarily reflects the quality of the contents. 

[sandro]

3 hours ago, nitroplait said:

Anyway, I don't think pricing on many of these relatively rare books necessarily reflects the quality of the contents. 

Well said! I agree.

Lex

[UliWer]

Well, even if the book's pricing on the second market is certainly absurd and the title "European Non-Leitz LEICA Thread-Mount Lenses" would be more appropriate one should assess its content fairly. 

To give you an idea here is the table of contents:

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The book reflects the knowledge of the 90s when there weren't many sources about these items on the internet and therefore one had to dig deep into paperworks which was often incomplete or left much room for discussion. The chapter about "Clones, Copies and Fakes" ends on p. 100 with "We all have much research left to do!" I think this is still right today.

The author who also published a book about Zeiss deals prominently with (so called...) "Zeiss" lenses which appeared in 39mm mount. I think these chapters are very unreliable as he does not explain the differences between the original Zeiss production with 39mm LTM mount and the much larger "clone, copy and fake" production which used the fame of Zeiss and especially "Sonnar" for their offsprings. E.g. he takes the engraving "Leica Sonnar" as a sign for an unofficial but original Zeiss production (p.21f). A recently published explanation by Zeiss itself shows that these lenses were postwar East German fakes of pilfered optics. I quoted the source here:  

He also describes the sloppy appearance of many mounts of Zeiss lenses with 39mm which he attributes to wartime shortages but does not discuss the obvious question if this isn't a sign for postwar Russian (or even East-German) fakes. You may find some information here: http://www.mflenses.com/how-to-avoid-zeiss-sonnar-fakes.html . My personal rule of thumb is: shun the whole "Zeiss" (or better so called "Zeiss") production - be it in Contax or LTM-mount  - with serial numbers higher than 2.700.00 and lower than 3.000.000 if you don't have a reliable source that they were really made, e,g. a small batch of collapsible f2/5mm Sonnars:

The chapter in Small's book about the Soviet production (p. 76ff.) deals a lot with different locations of optical plants and their different brand names and it mentions that there is a difference between "Leitz-derived" and "Contax/Zenith-derived" clones with 39mm mount. Though I don't find any description what really makes this difference: it's the flange to film distance, so even Contax/Zenith-derived lenses with rangefinder coupling for the Leica won't focus properly on a Leica if the flange-to-film distance wasn't changed - which it often wasn't in production, e.g. for most of the production with the "Jupiter" brand.

He also doesn't mention that many West-German lenses with 39mm mount were made for the Braun Paxette which also had a completely different flange to film distance, so these lenses were not coupled and won't focus to infinity with  a Leica, e.g. by Schneider, Steinheil and Staeble. 

Edited December 25, 2024 by UliWer

[BernardC]

Also, to be fair to the author, the book was published just prior to the golden age of eBay. Knowledge about Soviet Block lenses exploded all of a sudden in the West, because we could buy these lenses for very little money. Mythical lenses became commonplace in the space of a few months.

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[UliWer]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb BernardC:

Knowledge about Soviet Block lenses exploded all of a sudden in the West,

Not only about the Soviet lenses but in Western Europe also about Japanese lenses with LTM mount. I think they were only very scarcely delivered outside Japan and US during their actual time of production and before the times of ordering by internet. 

[dkCambridgeshire]

The first English edition published 1997 was listed by Fountain Press for £19.95. Bought my copy c. 1999. 

Ref the exorbitantly priced £617.99 example: If someone then spots another copy for £199.99, they'll buy it – thinking they have a 'bargain'.

Similar price hiking happens with Thomas Tomosy's "Leica Camera Repair Handbook".